the history of cardboard

Corrugated Papermaking - Cardboard

In 1856, Englishmen, Healey and Allen, received a patent for the first corrugated or pleated paper. The paper was used to line men's tall hats.

American, Robert Gair promptly invented the corrugated cardboard box in 1870. These were pre-cut flat pieces manufactured in bulk that opened up and folded into boxes.

On December 20, 1871, Albert Jones of New York NY, patented a stronger corrugated paper (cardboard) used as a shipping material for bottles and glass lanterns.

Baudrillard arrives in NYC, declares heir to Hellenism

"You discover a feeling of glory in New York, in the sense that you feel wreathed in the general energy of the place - what you are part of here is not the lugubrious spectacle of change, as you find it in Europe, but the aesthetic form of a mutation".
(J. Baudrillard [trans. C. Turner], 2000, America. Verso ltd.)

mutatis mutandis

1498, "with the necessary changes," from L., lit. "things being changed that have to be changed," from the abl. pl. respectively of the pp. and gerundive of mutare "to change" (see mutable).

Reminders to the initial and the final proposal attached to 'mutate'- need to re-member my enquiries into this mutation and these mutations.
Feeling that the mutuality of the PC being-as-it-is, must change.
The changes to be done, and being done, are necessary, have to be necessary though all the while, in their becoming necessary they will be changed. Rewrit as We see fit. Change, don't keep it.
Further research "from the aphorism to the soundbite- via the throw away comment; an anti-history of saying what you want to say in as few words as possible, in succint, but often opaque manner."

About time I moved my research and reading into the contextual specific work of America, further biting for the chew into the text of Monsieur Baudrillard. Should further compare and cross-reference bis texts and lexical flagposts e.g. horison, end, hyperreality across his works.

"...tomorrow I shall be carried directly by plane... -to the city that is heir to all cities at once. Heir to Athen, Alexandria, Persepolis; New York."
(ibid.)

Baudrillard arrives and leaves us with the comparative urban contexts of the ancients with the present. Athens, Alexandria and Persepolis in recent historical retrospect are now thought to be the first 'cosmopolitan' cities: "The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral and socio-political philosophy."
Again, how 'new' is postmodernism? If the cultural and contextual melting pot has been cooking since before that great landmark/flagstone of Our Lord, why such arousal in the critics of postmodernism?

The period of Hellenism as is known now emerged out of the conquests of Alexander the Great, the world's first great colonialist, it has been argued. However, for my research purposes, it is this cultural, increasingly urban 'side-effect'/consequences of his colonialism that interest me most with regards to my contextual enquiries into mutliculturalism, neo/new cultures, languages, 'ways':

"Alexander the Great's conquests and the subsequent division of his empire into successor kingdoms sapped local cities of much of their traditional authority and fostered increased contacts between cities, and later, the rise of the Roman Empire united the whole of the Mediterranean under one political power. But it is wrong to say what has frequently been said, that cosmopolitanism arose as a response to the fall of the polis or to the rise of the Roman empire. First, the polis' fall has been greatly exaggerated. Under the successor kingdoms and even — though to a lesser degree — under Rome, there remained substantial room for important political engagement locally. Second, and more decisively, the cosmopolitanism that was so persuasive during the so-called Hellenistic Age and under the Roman Empire was in fact rooted in intellectual developments that predate Alexander's conquests."
(extracted from Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmopolitanism/)

"Greek dedications, statues, architecture and inscriptions have all been found. However, local cultures were not replaced, and often mixed to create a new culture." (Wikpedia, Hellenistic Civilization).

It was from this pan-european&asian colonisation that the mutation of languages began, according to historical linguists. [more research to prove requiered]
What is also comparatively of interest to me along the threads of English becoming a Global Language (but in tern, being changes, adapted, assimilated and mutated by the other language communities that it attempts to impose itself upon; the premises I believe in), so Alexander's attempt to spread the

"... Hellenistic Koiné (writ large), the koine glóssa 'common language' of the Greece of Alexander the Great and subsequent times. This language transcended the local languages (or rather, dialects) of the various Greek city states and confederations of such states, with their previously jealously guarded separate political, cultural and linguistic identities..."
(Walter de Gruyter, 1991, Principles of Historical Linguistics, published first in Issue 34 of Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs)

Note also that de Gruyter discusses further this koiné "a de Atticized Attic : It was based on the dialect of Athens, a city which had become one of the most important state in Greece ..." and beyond, undoubtedly. See how a dialect nurtured and raised in an urban context soon became an ancient global language?

And now to weave D&G., left impatient at the back of the line awaiting their arrival, back into the 'line' of enquiry- above you read further theoretical~critical evidence of how NYC is a 'city without a language', without a culture, under its own self-imposed inquisition of unweaving all its citizens contextual backgrounds , but rather than replace them with the factitious seals of American approval, the city mixes/mezclaytes its citizens 'anew' from their constant attempt to understand each other and their selves being sew into the selvages of an urban past being perpetuated in an endless present...

Fire Escape Performance Research

Another Conflux festival project that resembles ideas I've been having about performing in NYC:

Fire Escapes

Tom Peyton - DoTank:Brooklyn

Fire Escapes reveals and revels in the timbre of one of the most ubiquitous structures in New York City. A unique and enveloping soundtrack is generated through a fundamental element of the urban fabric.

6 drummers will play two fire escapes on E. 7th as instruments. Performers will be on a pair of structures facing each other on either side of the street. Utilizing interlocking patterns, Fire Escapes will accentuate the dynamic spatial characteristics of the vertically positioned ensemble. The piece will be cyclical, patient, and repetitive.

The piece expands on the existing exploration of New York residents into how fire escapes can serve everyday social purposes beyond their intended function. Currently, fire escapes become terraces, reading rooms, and sunbathing decks. Fire Escapes redefines these structures as performance spaces.

A performance I've just started thinking about involves developing a durational performance on the ubiquitous and quintessential New York Fire Escapes, sites we are all familiar with when imagining the urban landscape and language of NYC.

The particular Fire Escape I would be performing within would be the one just outside the back wall of Grace Exhibition Space, where the only access from within the GES is through a small porter door with a A4 white sheet scrawled in pencil saying 'Do Not Open Ever!!'. This sign however has nothing to do with GES and its author remains unknown.

So far current ideas are growing out of looking at the metal materiality of the site, the spaces and construction of the bars and the space- perhaps tying threading weaving material through the bars to create a shelter of some kind? a web or nest or bolthole? Other ideas involve creating a kind of 'community garden' of a more surreal nature whereby products as well as more conventional organic vegetables and food consumables would be buried in banana boxes laid out along the metal construction of the Fire Escapes, and my 'role'/performance would be to be a performance gardener and to 'garden' the products and give them away to the audience- or perhaps following on the trajectory of Chaw Ei Thein's (who has performed at Grace Exhibition Space) performance "Mobile Market", where she sold basic food consumables, such as rice, salt, spices at prices before inflation which generated a fantastic 'economic nostalgia' in her audience buying and selling- trading is what I mean! Therefore, I would 'sell' or trade the products for a lower price than is the current RRP in the USA for the products at supermarkets and deli stores.

However, as with all site specific work, as opposed to site dominant and purely interventional work, I would want the performance and installation to come out of my communication with the site i.e. spending time exploring the site, experimenting with materials and how the site is performing its function and how to use that as stating points for devising, and how to subvert and expound upon its present performativity.