SOHO, URBAN SCALING and LIVING LINES PROJECT

Today's Fragment Festival in Desalvio Playground is an interesting experiment in the creation of alternative spheres of urban intimacy outside the corporate and governmental sector.  Generated by a group of artists working through the organization of Action Arts League, the event is an investigation of small scale urbanism.  Informal, provisional, low key in impact, the occasion allowed for different kinds of social encounters across different demographics to emerge in ways that otherwise do not occur within dense movement in places like NoLiTa and SoHo.

What I find really hopeful and exciting about this event is how people are coming together at a time when there is very little money in the arts and generating a lot of spirit, possibility and creative energy that is infectious and producing interesting aesthetic responses.  

Harmattan Theater put up an installation today, June 6, 2009 at Desalvio Playground in SoHo exploring micro scale urbanism.  The project began with a study of the fragment of Viele's map covering the SoHo region.  We started by thinking about the ecology of the area before 2009.  The installation emerged through the idea of architect Brian McGrath to trace the visual lines of NoLiTa's everyday history of hanging clotheslines as a cultural throughline.  The installation comprises of drawings on acetate paper of urban movement in three different scales: close up, medium shot and hand held camera following the action around, a theory proposed by Brian McGrath and Jean Gardiner as the theory of cinemetrics, a theory of visual scales.  The three registers of figurative scaling of human mobility opens up the kinds of social mapping otherwise lost in the intensity of urban intimacies.  Using twine, clips, and mylar, the installtion was hung across the Desalvio Playground, simulating hanging laundry as a visual trace.  The installation was performed by Jose DeJesus, Victoria Marshall and May Joseph.