Triple Canopy #7, Urbanisms: Master Plans

Online now:
Triple Canopy, Issue 7
Urbanisms: Master Plans

Upcoming event:
Wang Bing: Crude Oil
Presented with Light Industry

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Triple Canopy, Issue 7
Urbanisms: Master Plans

Currently online:
A Note on Urbanisms
by the Editors
An introduction to the second issue examining our current urban situation and what lies beyond it: the city’s past and its future; the suburban, the exurban, the frontier.

Daybreak
by Lucy Raven
In the suburbs of Salt Lake City, the newest great dead American economy lies in wake atop the last one.

Construction
by Zs with Josh Slater
Music built from time and ceremony, suspended between composition and chance, illustrated by stairwells and other totems.

Coming soon:
The Wrong Way Forward
Kazys Varnelis in conversation with Triple Canopy
The collapse of complex societies, the benefits of foreclosure, and the end of technological advancement as we know it.

Divine Wilderness
by Nathan Schneider
From Thomas Aquinas and John the Baptist to cellular automata and intelligent design: How God taught us planning, and where we went wrong.

The VPL Authority
by Rustam Mehta & Thomas Moran with Keller Easterling
Deep in the desert Southwest, a public-private corporation is building a mega-eco-city that will be the hub of a new high-speed rail network. Welcome to “smart-sprawl.”

Better Underground
by Urban China, translated by John Thompson
When cities reach their breaking point, life must be moved beneath the surface. China’s subterranean-development expert speaks.

Learning from Tijuana
Teddy Cruz in conversation with Caleb Waldorf
From the graveyards of corporate architecture to the informal settlements of Latin America.

Dubai Dream Houses
by Zlatan Filipovic
The sand settles over the stand-alone facades that advertised Dubai’s burgeoning suburban developments, now forsaken. An interactive landscape.

The Anatomy of Ruins
Bryan Finoki & Rene Peralta in conversation with Caleb Waldorf
New American landscapes: varieties of blight, idylls of desolation, the lifespan of decay.

It Had Just Entered Our Valleys
by Hovannes Tumanyan, translated by Meline Toumani, with photographs by Vahram Aghasyan
Rail transport comes to Armenia in 1898; the Soviets pour concrete there a century later. A newly translated story by the famed Armenian author, alongside a current-day landscape.

Wang Bing: Crude Oil
Presented with Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor, Brooklyn, NY
November 4–8, 2009
9 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily
“The question of whether Crude Oil by Wang Bing is an installation or a film screening is basically trivial. It is an important and grand work and the label is not that relevant. What is relevant is how an exhausting work like this can best be presented. And how it can live on.”

—International Film Festival Rotterdam

Triple Canopy and Light Industry present the East Coast premiere of Wang Bing’s Crude Oil, a fourteen-hour film installation tracking a fourteen-hour workday of crude-oil extraction in northwest China. Wang’s film will be on view from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m. each day, running five times in its entirety.

Accompanying Crude Oil in an adjacent room will be a film program by Matthew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Lucy Raven (7:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 4; reception to follow), as well as the American premiere of Wang Bing’s Coal Money (4 p.m., Saturday, November 7; discussion to follow with NYU professors Rebecca Karl and Zhen Zhang) and a screening of Wang’s nine-hour West of the Tracks (12 p.m., Sunday, November 8). A curated DVD library of related films will be available for viewing throughout the week. For more information and a full press release, click here.

“444 Days in the Dark”: GQ’s oral history of the Iran hostage crisis

From GQ: Thirty years ago this month, sixty-six Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Over the next year, misguided foreign policy and disastrous intelligence would take eight American lives, cost Jimmy Carter the presidency, and introduce a different kind of enemy that we’ve failed to understand ever since

I contributed reporting to this expansive narrative of the Iran hostage crisis, published on its thirtieth anniversary. This is in the November issue of the magazine, currently on newsstands. Click here to read the piece in its entirety.

They were geeks with guns—hundreds of Muslim medical and engineering students who stormed the U.S. embassy in the heart of Tehran on November 4, 1979. In brazen violation of international law, they triumphantly seized as hostages sixty-six Americans. The Americans were CIA, they claimed, and the embassy a “nest of spies.”

Nine time zones away, President Jimmy Carter assumed that the Iranian government would swiftly quash the occupation, as it had done with a similar incident the previous February. But those expectations were demolished when, days later, the provisional government fell. It would be months before the president knew who was actually in charge in Iran, and 444 days before the hostages returned home.

During those fourteen and a half months, America discovered to its surprise that millions of Iranians loathed our government. As the students told the world, a CIA-led coup in 1953 had overthrown Mohammed Mossadeq, the prime minister of Iran, and replaced him with the Shah, a puppet dictator in thrall to the West. In the weeks before the takeover, President Carter had allowed the dying Shah, who had fled Iran, into the U.S. This, the students believed, was proof that America was planning yet another coup.

Rallying behind the charismatic cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and caught up in his romantic vision of an Iran cleansed of Western influence, the students demanded that the U.S. return the Shah so that he could stand trial. Only later did they realize Khomeini was using them to consolidate his own power.

Thirty years later, it’s clear that the takeover of the embassy in Tehran changed the world in ways we’re still coming to understand. The power struggle that Khomeini won put Iran’s immense oil revenues into the hands of radical mullahs who used them to help fund modern Islamic jihad. And when Khomeini died in 1989, he left behind a political culture so repressive that today many of the hostage-takers themselves are leading the effort to reform it.

GQ spoke with more than fifty men and women—hostages, hostage-takers, commandos from the ill-fated U.S. rescue mission, and Iranian and American politicians and policymakers—to re-create this fateful historical moment and explore its ongoing impact.—NATE PENN

*****

“WE WERE JUST A BUNCH OF STUDENTS”

Mohsen Mirdamadi
Hostage-taker; now a reformist and defendant in ongoing show trials
When the revolution happened in Iran, young people were concerned about the intentions of the United States regarding the new regime. We believed the United States was against the revolution and that it was preparing another coup. When the Shah went to America, it was a confirmation of this belief.

Saeed Hajjarian
Hostage-taker; now jailed for dissent
The U.S. made a mistake taking in the Shah. People in Iran were very sensitive to this issue. If they had not admitted him, nothing would have happened.

Mirdamadi: There is a difference between a revolutionary atmosphere and a normal atmosphere. In a revolutionary atmosphere, you aren’t afraid of anything.

Ebrahim Asgharzadeh
Chief architect of the takeover; now a reformist, jailed for dissent
“Imperialism” was the biggest word for me: It signaled what the U.S. was all about. We didn’t see complexities; we saw the U.S. as one bloc. But we were engineers, students; we weren’t fundamentalists. In fact, we saw fundamentalism as a danger.

Mirdamadi: We believed we had a right to do this—that if we didn’t attack the embassy, they could attack us. We thought we needed two or three days to see all the documents. If there was a plan [for a coup], we would find something.

Asgharzadeh: It was supposed to be a small, short-term affair. We were just a bunch of students who wanted to show our dismay at the United States. After that, it got out of control.

Elaheh Mojarradi
Hostage guard; wife of Mohsen Mirdamadi
Were we exploited? Definitely. Certain groups used the crisis for their own ends.

Asgharzadeh: It turned into a power battle. The temporary government was crushed, and the more revolutionary and radical forces gained self-confidence and self-assurance.

Mirdamadi: The reason it lasted so long was that when we captured the embassy, we got the support of Ayatollah Khomeini. He was a charismatic leader, and his influence over the people was exceptional in history. I don’t know any other example like it.

Asgharzadeh: It came to a point where no one could say any longer when the hostages could be freed, even after the Shah was gone. It became an international affair, with repercussions we hadn’t foreseen. We were taken out of the decision-making process. We were basically just hostages of the hostages….

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Summer issue of Bidoun out now

All hail INTERVIEWS.

Issue 6 of Triple Canopy, Urbanisms: Model Cities, now online

Triple Canopy, Issue 6
Urbanisms: Model Cities

The first five pieces are currently online, with the rest to be published over the next month.

A Note on Urbanisms
By the Editors
An introduction to two issues examining our current urban situation and what lies beyond it: the city’s past and future; the suburban, the exurban, the frontier.

He Is Fresh and Everyone Else Is Tired
By Ian Volner & Matico Josephson
In 1966, New York’s new mayor, John Lindsay, launched a series of far-reaching plans to transform the city, most of which were never realized. The authors recover that vision and its lessons for the present day.

Boom, Bust, Burn, Blame: The Story of Fake Omaha
By Neil Greenberg
From CyBar Stadium to Soapbox Yards: an artist project considering the evolution of a paper-and-ink city.

Index or Constructed by Way of Experiment
By José León Cerrillo with Peter J. Russo
Supreme geometries and densely packed buildings: an artist project cannibalizing the sites and structures of modernism in Mexico City.

Wrong Place, Right Time
By José León Cerrillo
A limited-edition poster to support new commissions for Triple Canopy.

Infrastructure for Souls
By Joseph Clarke
Tracing the parallel histories of the American megachurch and the corporate-organizational complex.

Virtual Bowery
By Dan Torop
Rebuilding the Bowery in one adequate descriptive system, with Lower Manhattan circa 1997 as a flock of swans.

Wiederholungszwang
By Gil Blank with Caleb Waldorf
The trauma of lost histories and the joys of JPEGs. A webcam atop the highest hill in Portland, Maine, transports one public place to another, and another.

What Is the Antique in Truro: A Portfolio
By Adam Davies with Taylor Baldwin
Photographic portraits of the unnatural in nature, from Pittsburgh to Lynchburg and beyond.

The City That Built Itself
By Joshua Bauchner
Utopian modernism turned on its head in Caracas, where residents have turned fifty-year-old superblock housing projects into the locus of sprawling improvised settlements.

Monoactivité
By Jules Treneer
In Paris’s 11th arrondissement, the boulangeries–and everything else–have been displaced by Chinese textile wholesalers, and the government is determined to legislate them into oblivion.

MoMA, China
By Angie Waller
Amid the wreckage of old Beijing, the Modern Group debuts “MoMA,” a condominium tower that pays homage to Mies and Design Within Reach.

Underground Space
By Shu Yu with Tong Zhen
Why we must create subterranean cities: an interview with the vice director of Shanghai Underground Space Research Center, excerpted from Urban China magazine.

Gypsy Mansions
By Lev Bratishenko
The Roma build their palaces just like the rest of us, one cinder block at a time.

Triple Canopy works collectively with writers, artists, researchers and other collaborators on projects that deal critically with culture and politics, and the ways people engage them, both online and in the world at large. These investigations are realized in an online magazine as well as in public programs and print publications encompassing various fields and locales. We aim to present work and advance ideas informed by a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, and to disseminate them among a broad and diverse audience. Triple Canopy was founded in late 2007; our first issue was published on March 17, 2008.

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Spring issue of Bidoun out now

All hail flowers.

Triple Canopy nominated for National Magazine Award

On Wednesday we’ll see whether or not we’re in the same league as Runnersworld.com, Parenting.com, and Backpacker.com, our competitors in the general excellence online category, along with MotherJones.com (which is also oriented around service, though service of a decidedly less commodifiable variety). Start phoning the American Society of Magazine Editors now.

http://www.magazine.org/asme/magazine_awards/index.aspx

Talking about Kafka and the Kafkaesque on “The Book Show”

Now I’ve done radio. Specifically, ABC Radio Australia’s “The Book Show,” with the indomitable Ramona Koval. Flailing and attempting to recover, repeatedly:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2505953.htm

Kafkaesque and Kafkology: the mythology of Franz Kafka

listen now | download audio

Where does the myth about Franz Kafka’s life meet up with the reality?

The term Kafkaesque refers to perplexing, frustrating, almost absurd experience of bureaucracy and Kafkology has contributed to what some describe as the Kafka industry.

He’s remembered as an emotionally tortured writer whose father was a brute, but his diaries reveal he was prone to exaggeration about his personal misery.

What does any of this have to do with the appreciation of his writing?

Guests

Alexander Provan
Founding editor of US online magazine, Triple Canopy.

Further Information

An Alienation Artist: Franz Kafka and his critics
For The Nation magazine, American writer Alexander Provan explores the line between Franz Kafka’s fiction and his life.

Triple Canopy, Issue 5: Idol Traffic

Issue 5: Idol Traffic http://canopycanopycanopy.com

Flash Yr Idols by Bidisha Banerjee with George Collins From Kolkata and the universe within Krishna’s mouth to Vermont and the pleasures of virtual prayer. A memoir and a video game. Between Scans by Peter Kerlin & Anna Sperber A video in two parts: human dancer and analog tools. Movements, voltage patterns, poses, signal processing. Horror Film 1: Shanghai Blue by Leslie Thornton A photographic serial approaching a cinematic genre; a deformation of one art form to infiltrate another. The Matter of Past-Loving London by Ben Street & the International Necronautical Society A report on the purported delivery of the INS Declaration on Inauthenticity—office comedy Blanchot would’ve loved to death. Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Inaugural America by Ben Tausig The crisis of authenticity in the age of immanent tinkering. Television for the People by Ed Halter The fan-made world of Jeff Krulik, from public access to parking lots to proto-peer-to-peer. The Dominican Game by Patrick Clark In the island republic, boys and men chase American dollars and baseball dreams. Mightiest in the Land by Patrick Corcoran A world super-flyweight champion rises from “some godforsaken town in northern Mexico” and returns to it. Thinking Through Images #2 by Hassan Khan with Clare Davies Pygmalion and the pig for breakfast; Porky, Sun Ra, and suffering: a larded exchange. New Black by New Humans Evidence of a a postindustrial disassembly line, performed live with a drill, mirrored plates, construction lights, and sheer distortion.

Upcoming event: More Talks About Buildings: An Evening with Triple Canopy The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York, NY April 7, 7 pm, free and open to the public For this event, expanding on an issue devoted to new and old forms of urbanism, Triple Canopy excavates real, unrealized, and potential spaces: a planned mega-eco-city in the desert Southwest, a grand Utahan suburb nurtured by the tailings from nearby coal mines, lost visions of New York, lessons from Sarajevan city life, and more. for Triple Canopy Rachel Aviv, Taylor Baldwin, Colby Chamberlain, Anwyn Crawford, Adam Florin, Hannah Frank, Sam Frank, Matt Frassica, Kimmy Eliot Fung, Adam Helms, Nima Jahromi, Sarah Kessler, Molly Kleiman, Laurence Lowe, Alexander Provan, Tom Roberge, Peter J. Russo, Genevieve Smith, William Smith, Caleb Waldorf, and Hannah Whitaker Triple Canopy works collectively with writers, artists, researchers and other collaborators on projects that deal critically with culture and politics, and the ways people engage them, both online and in the world at large. These investigations are realized in an online magazine as well as in public programs and print publications encompassing various fields and locales. We aim to present work and advance ideas informed by a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, and to disseminate them among a broad and diverse audience. Triple Canopy was founded and launched in late 2007. RSS | Un/subscribe

Triple Canopy, Issue 4: War Money Magic

Issue 4: War Money Magic http://canopycanopycanopy.com

Star Wars: A New Heap by John Powers Was George Lucas a minimalist? Was Donald Judd a Jedi? The coincidences of Star Wars, minimalism, modernist architecture and urban planning. Milestones: The Noble Lie by Adam Helms An artist project examining the symbiotic relationship between the works and lives of Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss, and the visions they have spawned. Programming by Seth Erickson. Reconstruction by Rachel Owens “Human beings are human beings are human beings.” Collages with enemies exsected to the point of embrace, and an interview with Desmond Tutu. The Stalin by Picasso Case by Lene Berg, with Sam Frank Has a 1953 portrait of Stalin been censored by Cooper Union in 2008? A dossier of evidence, for and against. Bullion with a Mission by Barry Harbaugh Bernard von NotHaus’s crusade to establish an alternative to the dollar and challenge the supremacy of the Federal Reserve. Photography by Julia Sherman. No Other Home by Maria Sonevytsky, with photography by Alison Cartwright The stories and songs of Crimean Tatars who have returned to their homeland after fifty years in exile. Homemade Memorials by Sonya Blesofsky The second installment of an ongoing project memorializing desecrated, destroyed, and forgotten buildings, with sculptures constructed from images submitted by readers. Heraclitus Series by Amir Mogharabi Currents in logic made ancient, for OS 9. An artist project bringing together the fragments of Heraclitus and the calculus of truth tables. Flash Yr Idols by Bidisha Banerjee, with George Collins From Kolkata and the universe within Krishna’s mouth to Vermont and the pleasures of virtual prayer. A rumination and a Flash game. Original Ideas in Magic by Tim Davis “Think of a number between thunder and money.” Poems and proliferating visions of a magician’s lair without a magician. With photocollages by Hannah Whitaker.

This Friday, November 14: New Black Triple Canopy issue 4 launch party and performance by New Humans With Orphan and DJ sets by curator/writer Bob Nickas and musician Mark Ibold (Sonic Youth, ex-Pavement). Artwork by Colby Bird, Jonah Groeneboer, Andres Laracuente, Matthew Lusk, Rachel Owens, John Powers, and Lucy Raven. Starr Space, 108–110 Starr Street, Brooklyn $7 donation, $3 drinks; doors at 8pm Directions: Take the L train to Jefferson Street. Head southeast on Wyckoff Avenue toward Troutman Street and turn right at Starr Street. for Triple Canopy Rachel Aviv, Taylor Baldwin, Colby Chamberlain, Adam Florin, Hannah Frank, Sam Frank, Kimmy Eliot Fung, Adam Helms, Sarah Kessler, Molly Kleiman, Laurence Lowe, Alexander Provan, Tom Roberge, Kathleen Ross, Peter J. Russo, Genevieve Smith, William Smith, Caleb Waldorf, Hannah Whitaker, and Jane Yakowitz Triple Canopy works collectively with writers, artists, researchers and other collaborators on projects that deal critically with culture and politics, and the ways people engage them, both online and in the world at large. These investigations are realized in an online magazine as well as in public programs and print publications encompassing various fields and locales. We aim to present work and advance ideas informed by a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, and to disseminate them among a broad and diverse audience. Our first issue was published on March 17, 2008. RSS | Un/subscribe

Triple Canopy Issue #3: NOLA

 

Issue 3: NOLA http://canopycanopycanopy.com

Featuring: Tours and Detours: Walking the Ninth Ward by Brian Rosa A self-guided tour through the built and natural environment of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward.  I Knew Then It Was All on Me by Ben Phelps-Rohrs and Brian Rosa Audio portraits of Lower and Upper Ninth Ward residents struggling to rebuild their homes, lives, and communities. Way of the Righteous: The Art of Roy Ferdinand by Martina Batan, as told to Alexander Provan and Peter J. Russo “Rembrandt was Rembrandt, Picasso was Picasso, Kandinsky was Kandinsky, and Ferdinand is Ferdinand.” The life and work of a self-taught New Orleans artist. A World of Bad Taste: The Art of Rudolph Radlinger with Andy Antippas Flag, seashell, bearskin, glitter, baby powder: selections from a self-taught photographer’s oeuvre and a short video. Landfall: A Portfolio by Will Steacy Photographs taken in the year following Hurricane Katrina. Homemade Memorials by Sonya Blesofsky with Peter J. Russo The launch of an ongoing project memorializing desecrated, destroyed, and forgotten buildings via reader submissions. Upcoming events: November 5, Light Industry: panel on the genesis of the new-media magazine November 14, Starr Space: New Humans and Orphan with DJ sets by Bob Nickas and Mark Ibold for Triple Canopy Rachel Aviv, Taylor Baldwin, Colby Chamberlain, Adam Florin, Hannah Frank, Sam Frank, Kimmy Eliot Fung, Adam Helms, Sarah Kessler, Molly Kleiman, Laurence Lowe, Alexander Provan, Tom Roberge, Kathleen Ross, Peter J. Russo, Genevieve Smith, William Smith, Caleb Waldorf, Hannah Whitaker, and Jane Yakowitz      Triple Canopy works collectively with writers, artists, researchers and other collaborators on projects that deal critically with culture and politics, and the ways people engage them, both online and in the world at large. These investigations are realized in an online magazine as well as in public programs and print publications encompassing various fields and locales. We aim to present work and advance ideas informed by a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, and to disseminate them among a broad and diverse audience. Our first issue was published on March 17, 2008. RSS | Un/subscribe