Andrew Schroeder

Utopian Slumps - Ed Rucha

This morning has been a particularly productive one for me. I went to bed with Curtis at 8:30 AM and proceeded to sleep soundly for the first time in about a month. If there is one undercurrent to this blog, or my life in general, it is that I love to be unconscious… by whatever means necessary. Anyway, I’m finally to work, doing my little office-cockroach tasks and gazing out at the snow.

ROR (Revolutions on Request)

The white blanket that is dropping over the city at the moment makes me believe I could be anywhere at the moment.  And, why not take a second to think about being in a utopia of sorts. Back in 2003, I had the chance to see the “Utopia Station” exhibition at the Venice Biennale – a great exhibition of posters and designs relating to one of my favorite subjects.

Be sure to check out the project’s website for PDF downloads of all the posters.

I was walking by the Chambers Hotel a couple of days ago and noticed that the hotel restaurant is now a D’Amico and Sons. This is nothing spectacular in itself, but what is interesting is the way signage has been changed on the building. The previous restaurant was the celebrated/lauded (depending on how you looked at it) Kitchen by Jean-Georges. And the signs for this eatery were dimensional cast metal and attached to the hotel’s chic, Richard Serra, core-ten steel facade. Now, the funny thing is that the facade has changed so dramatically over the course of the last few years that “KITCHEN by JEAN GEORGES” is now etched in the surface of the rusty-colored steel.

In essence, the building is permanently branded with this moniker.

This got me thinking, as always, about all the little ways our lives are being “branded.” The biggest annoyance to date is the branding of the Walker Art Center. (Or, really any cultural institution in the Twin Cities) So, I would like to make a modest project proposal. It goes a bit like this:

In the current climate of corporate sponsorship of the arts, it is impossible to enter a gallery space, museum, or other art institution without being openly reminded of the corporations whose funds have made that particular space possible. Once the realm of private commissions and later the target of public spending through education and social programs, art has now become the a byproduct of corporate culture. It is impossible to be an avid viewer of art and not draw the conclusions that the purchasing of culture by wealthy corporations is in fact changing, editing, sanctioning, and altering our shared culture.

For the project I am proposing, I will strip the Walker of all of the demarcations of corporate sponsorship for the duration of 1 month. During this time, the Best Buy Galleries and Cargill Lounge will be renamed and freed of their associations with corporate ownership of culture. For example, the Cargill Lounge will be renamed Lounge. Imagine meeting at the Walker on Thursday Free Nights… minus the Target corporation.

Art is one facet of culture. Culture is never static. Static entities cannot be tied to the agendas of monolithic corporations.

Canon A-1... born 5-1-1982, the same date I was...

For the first time in months (notice the dust on the top of the body) I am loading up my Canon A-1 and shooting some 35mm film. I’d like to think that 35mm is going to go through a renaissance this year… digital has become the status quo and large-format mega photos seem almost passé. Enter 35mm with all of its glorious film grain and beautiful quirks.

A Concrete Modern Gem in Whittier

It has been a magical day, I won’t lie about it. However, here is a lesson everyone should learn: DO NOT eat protein salad from Kowalski’s deli before going to bed. You will sleep for about 2 hours and then… POOF! Awake! Here I am at 2:00 AM sitting around writing blog posts and reflecting on my day.

Asahi Shimbun

I managed to score some pretty amazing items today from a garage sale in North MPLS. My most prized find: an unused 70′s Swedish mountain-scape mural. You know… those paste-on wall paper things that had terrible color balance… chances are one of your grandparents had one in their dining room. Or, if you were lucky like I was, your 8th grad science teacher had one in the lab. I think ours was of the surface of the moon.

More Furniture... We're All Becoming Nomads These Days

Speaking of the surface of the moon, the milky light that settled over Minneapolis today was like being on another planet. I wandered around town with Curtis today. Whittier has finally started to hit it’s tipping point with object saturation… all of the things that are going to be covered by the first snowfall are being pushed to the streets in anticipation. Treasures waiting to be made treasures.

New Urban Neighborhood in MSP - Snoooooooze

I am a fan of the urban ideals pushed forward the New Urbanism movement. How could I not be? Any movement that encourages walkable, friendly, dense developments in our city centers is something I should appreciate if not support. But… however much I like the ideas, when they are implemented the resulting landscape is almost always less than desirable. For some reason we now equate urban living to be a viable lifestyle for only wealthy young people. If America’s cities are indeed experiencing a renaissance or re-inhabitation, let’s hope that someone comes up with a way to make New Urbanist practices and spaces that are available to those of us who do not have a trust fund. If this doesn’t happen… I imagine our city cores going from ghetto for the socially marginalized to ghetto for the socially marginalizing.

How boring.

One Tiny Shred of Human Presence

Beef, Tater, Meow!

Gas Station... Being Cleared Away

Long Live LynLake... in whatever form it ends up as...

More Empty Utopian Architecture, Montreal, 2009

To be brutally honest, there hasn’t been much color in my life recently. Visually, my attention has been focused on making black and white images for the past couple of weeks and have just not been “thinking in color”. Philosophically, I find myself being drawn into the idea of “gray” – a middle tone that seems appropriate for a world that is neither black and white, right or wrong… (more…)

I am very lucky to have the friends that surround me (even if they are on the other side of the country). I might even say I am exceptionally lucky. For example, my friend Andrea sent me this great card from the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York. At first glance it is simply a blank slate, ordinary piece of paper. But with a few twists… a pristine new architectural space is created. I have had this thing sitting on my desk… taunting me for the last few days. Taunting you say? How can paper-turned-space taunt someone?

Well, it is taunting me in the “unrealized potential” sector  that is located at the back of my brain (next to the part that craves the delicious muffins from Dunn Brothers).

Perhaps because of the city I live in, my view of architecture is becoming more and more static by the day. Instead of seeing architecture and buildings as sites of potential energy and social exchange, I’m too focused on the restraints, pathways, and barriers that are presented. How does one rectify this situation? Ah yes… by sneaking away to Mexico City again and photographing the informal architecture which shifts, like a sand dune in the sahara, over the city daily.

Wishful thinking… for a very busy Tuesday.

I’m taking a note from the EuroNews “No Comment” section and just posting some images today. After a rather confusing weekend, I am back to my daily grind. Here is just a small sampling of images captured this weekend as I wandered around the Mid-West… trying to get to know things a bit better.

Is Public Space Still Public Without Users?

(1) Lets face it, everyone becomes disillusioned with their life at some point. Disappointment with one’s situation and status is inevitable in the same way that costs will always rise and the last good day-old pastry will be sold by your barista before you can make it to the coffee shop. (I have nothing but love for my boys at Dunn Brothers, but the scone I am eating right now is not very tasty)

At the moment I find myself desperately searching for possible social interactions… but am finding only a great deal of empty space. Perhaps it is the city I live in. Maybe it is our age of digital interaction, but I find it overwhelmingly difficult to create new connections.

Does anyone else have this ailment? Has it always been this difficult to establish new lines of communication with the people surrounding me?

Should Public Space Be Hidden Away?

(2) For Walter Lippman the idea of “public” was the ultimate fiction. Human beings are embedded with the false knowledge that we can come together to form a cosmopolitan, diverse, and knowable body of individuals that can determine its own course of action.  He posits that “public” is a fantasy meant to make us believe that we are cells in an greater organism and, as such, we can determine the “will of the people”.

Lippman divides all members of a society into two types of people: agents and bystanders. Agents act freely, make “executive decisions on the basis of their own opinions. Bystanders are not agents of freewill. They are the background spectators to life’s events.

For Lippman, the “public” is the bystander – “a deaf spectator in the back row”.

There Is Always Evidence...

(3) Who are we?

Lippman admits that the border between agent and bystander is permeable. We move across it daily. The agents of one action are the bystanders of another and so on and so forth…

He posits that individuals are usually just spectators in life because of their perpetual self-interest and focus on private affairs.

I agree with this statement. How can there really be private life if there is no public life? I can spend the entire day in “public space” and never even grunt in communication with another individual. Eye contact seems to be a rarity when spectators are spectator to other spectators.

(4) Who am I?
By taking photographs of the absence of spaces for real public interaction, am I a bystander?  An agent? For these photographs to matter, do I have to alter the vacuums and deserted plazas? Does making a visual notation of the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life’s objects indicate that there might be a larger, unknowable, body of individuals out there?