Drownout France

English and French

Think of an SAT word. Now look up it's French translation here. Odds are, it's the same. Here are some easy ones to try: menace, ignoble, disdain.

Charming illustration of this fact:
Pig on the farm --> Pork on the table (French: "Porc")
Chicken on the farm --> Poultry on the table (French: "Poulet")
Cow on the farm --> Beef on the table (French: "Boeuf")

Isn't that cute!

Vichy France

One of 100s of markers in Paris. "Here fell..."

In an episode of The Simpsons, when Homer flashes-back to a teenage experience (in the 1950s it appears), a terrified buddy exclaims "I'm shakin' like a french soldier".

It's a foreign policy mood these days and if you're working on anything else, you're not working on what's interesting. Sad but true, and one consequence is that everything is political.

It is political, for example, that your father just bought a gas-guzzling Porsche because the recession's got the price way low. We are about to fight a war for gasoline and here he is switching his Honda for a Boxster. For example.

More to the point, it is political that I am sitting here in France in the midst of what some would describe as a great national security crisis. I wouldn't describe it that way. But it happens to be, no less, that war planning is happening and anniversary plans are being drawn for the loss of the World Trade Center.

It's one thing that Chirac has just given a speech opposing any American unilateral action on Iraq, but it is another in the context of French foreign policy. The socialist government's foreign minister was fond of picking fights with Bush and his team, and the new center-right foreign minister will apparently be charged with the same. It is an issue of pride and not policy, as is evident, since nationalist credentials come from resisting the hawks in Washington both in Paris and in Berlin.

Americans, however, don't much care about European positions, as they don't much care about South American positions, except only in the context of the Old World Order -- an order constructed around NATO and the critical strategic theater of Europe that dominated the Cold War. That's why Europe mattered then, but not vitally as material contributors to an arms-based military strategy and rather as the likeliest site of conflict.

When France resists American policy, the resonance is not with the Cold War standoff where France never came into play nor was France ever an unfaithful ally. Forgetting this faithfulness, however, American critics unfailingly look to World War 2 to find fault in French strategy.

If a strategy is called unwise, the French are impuissant cowards -- rolled over by tanks. If a strategy is called short-sighted, the French are myopic fools -- whose Maginot line was idiotic. If a strategy is called aggressive, the French are collaborators at Vichy -- as bad as Nazis. If the strategy is called reckless, impulsive, racist, unilateral, selfish, or anything else, then again the French are ingrates for wasn't it Americans that landed at Normandy?

The summary line is: the French (Europeans) are wimps and collaborators with the Nazis. Is it true? Consider how it crops up and consider Tony Judt's somewhat naive attribution of the view to the just a few mean-spirited hawks:

Powell notwithstanding, the realist (some might say cynical) consensus in the administration was that since America's allies are irrelevant to its military calculations and have no political choice but to tag along, nothing is gained by consulting them in advance or taking their sensitivities into consideration. In its crudest form this conclusion was well summarized, once again, by Charles Krauthammer:

Our sophisticated European cousins are aghast. The French led the way, denouncing American simplisme. They deem it a breach of manners to call evil by its name. They prefer accommodating to it. They have lots of practice, famously accommodating Nazi Germany in 1940.... We are in a war of self-defense. It is also a war for Western civilization. If the Europeans refuse to see themselves as part of this struggle, fine. If they wish to abdicate, fine. We will let them hold our coats, but not tie our hands.

It is typical of the ugly mood in parts of Washington today that Krauthammer omits to mention not only that France lost 100,000 men in six weeks of fighting against the Germans in 1940, but also that the United States maintained full diplomatic relations with the evil Nazis for a further eighteen months, until Hitler declared war on America in December 1941.

French Classics

The Citroen DS.

André Citroën has a park named after him in Paris. He and Renault were pretty much the only great French car-makers, though I hear Peugots are not bad (the one my dad briefly had was pretty crappy, to be frank).

Pictured to the right is a fine automobile: a classic Citroën DS. One of the great, timeless classics of French automotive design in the 60s, when the US was all hot over Mustangs and stuff.

This car, it reminds me of all the gangster movies in which it was featured.

To recall a famous line: The DS. D. S. The DS. La déesse. The goddess.

To me? It's a bit more of a Fred MacMurray. Or a Winston Churchill derby hat. I look at this car and I think of...a Packard, or a car still popular in India: the Ambassador. Except, for the space age. Fred MacMurray in Neil Armstrong's space suit.

It also came in a convertible version.

Ads

IBM Ad.

There is a series of IBM ads that's really just good-- you have seen them I'm sure. I'm thinking of the print ads, running for a long time now in all kinds of magazines. They are about "e-business".

There's usually a cool picture and some one-liner connecting a well-known brand name to their e-business. Then there's a whole bunch of text on the facing page, yammering on in business-guy jargon about meeting targets, ROI, cutting inventory, and so on.

Well they have the exact same ads in French (great place to learn la francaise des affaires).

I draw your attention now to the fuzzy photograph. I need a "better" digital camera to take these extreme close-ups. But you see that little squiggle on the top right? That says "Ogilvy" in a handwriting script. Ogilvy and Co. was the agency that produced this ad.

Flipping through the magazine, I noticed TBWA and other agencies listed. So they take credit for their own ads here -- bylines. How about that? You will not find it in the US.

Another ad: McDonald's is running TV stuff about their latest specials. Here as in the US, they try to push particular menu items in a rotation. That's to get you coming back and avoid the impression that you're "having McDonald's again!" tonight. Different stuff.

What they're advertising: McNewYork, this week only. The burger(s) -- a longish bun (kind of like a Philly hero) with two patties next to each other but playfully overlapping. And some other normal stuff. McNewYork. Great.

Today is August 28 and MacDo is selling a new burger with twin patties in a long tower(?) bun called McNewYork. Taste?

The Politics of Prancing

Raffarin and co.

For those of you stuck with the shabby New York Times, here are the headlines on my Parisian radio at this moment:

France:
1. (Raffarin is the PM and Chirac is the President, conservative government in place)
2. They have already passed a 5% tax cut
3. They announce now a move to "soften" the 35-hour workweek (NB: in the UK, where there is a 48-hour cap, the "exception" has become the rule)
4. Minimum wage ("smic") is to be reformed (I can't figure out if this means raising it or lowering it)
5. The "rentrée" is underway -- back to school and back to work (after 6 weeks or so of vacation, countrywide)

Spain:
1. They have banned a political party associated with Basque terrorism

Germany:
1. Schroder is coming back in the fight of his life against the grave conservative (think Dick Cheney not the hystrionic Trent Lott) competitor Stoiber, due to floods
2. The TV debate was a tie

UN/Johannesburg:
1. Being covered closely

US:
1. Bush plans to attack Irak no matter what (according to Cheney)

The Street Story in Geneva

Graffito.

What can you tell from some graffiti?

In the only neighborhood that I'd recommend spending any time in Geneva, Carouge, there is graffiti literally on every wall. Architecture in Geneva is a bit plain, but suprisingly the upkeep is rather easy-going. It needs to be more vigorous, since numerous graffitti writers have covered the walls everywhere.

Interesting thing about this writing, is that it is singularly uncomplicated and direct (perhaps just as the Swiss are otherwise). There isn't an artistic contest going on. They are trying to be as prolific as possible.

This bit up to the right seems to say "clairez" under an X, and to have some purple arabic writing above it.

The battle for the streets of the french-speaking youth and the arabic imports, disaffected all around and lashing out against the uncaring walls of the world? It's not for me to judge, I think.

A bizarre and ridiculous counterpoint, the billboards of the Protestant Church of Geneva are preaching a quasi-religious economic message all over town. See here. As best as I can understand, the billboards say things like "Recovery is...moving in together" or "Recovery is...always aiming higher". Odd thing, "recovery" in this context is meant to refer to economic recovery. So, the Church is encouraging those hoping for an economic recovery to think also about the spiritual recovery. Is there any spiritual movement in America (leaving devotion to Greenspan or the Maharishi Mahesh aside) that makes any reference at all to macroeconomic conditions?

A Suspicious People

Portrait studio.

The neutral Swiss. Surely they are neutral because they love peace.

The fact is, however, that the Swiss have always had a radically exposed military position between the grand old imperial French, the Holy Roman Empire-cum-German of late, and the Italians and their Popes. The Swiss just take it from all sides when there is war, and therefore being peaceniks makes sense. Consider this very interesting article by Robert Kagan recently in Policy Review. Not about the Swiss, but you'll get the idea.

Worried about the Cold War's end by Armageddon, they built extensive mountainside caves and blast shelters, equipped to supply hundreds of thousands. They arm all their private citizens and spend a huge sum annually on defense, maintaining the finest, untested army in the world.

And then there is that stuff about their behavior during World War 2, cooperating with the Germans. From what I have observed at the Berlin Jewish Museum and read in many other places, I don't think anyone knew about the mass exterminations--they didn't even start until nearer to the end of the war. So the Swiss collaborations--or anyone's for that matter--ought not be linked immediately to that. But Germany was virulently anti-semitic and had already engaged in a long list of persecutions against Jews, Gays, Slavs, and other groups. It doesn't make the Swiss look good.

The Swiss finance industry appears to operate in large part by protecting the funds of the world's criminals -- without question, huge sums of drug money and funds for all kinds of revoultionaries and dictators are stored there. While we were there, the papers covered a speech given by the revolutionary front that controls about 30% of Columbia and is currently holding a kidnapped minister. Of course they make money from coca, he says, but they also make money from coffee. No doubt, that money is kept in numbered Swiss accounts. The recent obituaries on the legendary Abu Nidal made sure to mention the tens of millions he held in accounts there (seized only via bungled withdrawal attempts).

Can Switzerland sustain its status as outcast from the global order? It's finance industry operates, essentially, but flouting the multinational standards for such business. Can it be that different from a rogue state in the end?

Geneva, the Oldest of the Old World

Mosaic of Geneva's flag.

The Swiss. Here are the top of mind reactions pre-trip: 1. Secretive banks -- heart of their economy, special banking laws 2. Neutral politics -- at the heart of Europe, neighboring great powers, well-advised strategy 3. Vaguely "friendly" or "liberal" vibe ?? -- green, heavy social-welfare 4. Chocolate -- Toblerone and Lindt, etc. 5. Watches -- all the famous brands 6. Skiing / Alps -- mountainous country 7. Big foodcos like Nestle -- oddly, but why not.

Perhaps this is what you think of when you think of Switzerland?

Some interesting new impressions:
1. Heavy military spending. 9% of the national budget. Every Swiss is armed and dangerous. Highest rate in the world (don't guess Israel to answer the question "which nation has the highest rate of gun ownership?")
2. No passport-stamping on the way in or out. To make it easy to shuttle dough?
3. Arabs, lots of them. Lax entry politicies to reward the sheikhs for keeping their oil-money in Swiss banks?
4. Urban decay, everywhere. Geneva is filthy, poorly maintained, poorly furnished. Worst, it has poor districts right at its heart and in desirable quarters (near the lake). Is this the product of over-weaning social welfare policy? Anti-gentrification or the result of gentrification?
5. John Calvin ground zero -- Geneva was his capital. Every building is dull, dull, dull. Grey, square, dull.
6. The Swiss are sort of "weird". I have had this experience with many of the smaller European countries, like the Dutch or the Danish. They just strike you as having strange personalities. Maybe you don't sympathize. But I find I have not framework for understanding the people or their culture. Perhaps because I know nothing about the Danish.
7. Cantons. Switzerland is kind of like the United Arab Emirates. A bunch of city-states that loosely federated for common protection. Not a strong national center. Keep that in mind when trying to think of political forms that resemble the US federalist model.
8. Romande. The fourth official language of Switzerland, apparently a latinate language though it sounded like Polish to me. But perhaps James Bond speaking Romande sounds Polish to anyone.
9. Geneva is a major international city -- home of the WTO and UN (Europe). But the population is under 300,000. That's smaller than the Upper West Side.
10. Geneva: dull, dull, dull. Do not go.

Schengen Renewal

Street Survey.

I am headed for the border.

After three months here, I must renew my visa. But I will not be back in the USA for some time yet, dear reader. Do not miss me.

When I return: news from Geneva, Switzerland, guaranteed to be the most boring city in Europe but outside of Germany.

Your Man in Paris Reports

Three trends I have noticed on the streets:
1. US college type stuff. Fake Michigan sweatshirts etc.
2. Camo/military patterns like patches
3. 80s punk stuff obviously. Prediction: next season will feature early hip hop styles -- hint, buy a rope-thick gold chain while you still can.

Mon Bleu!

My page is the number two result for "'sacre bleu' meanings" on Google. So I should give the meaning for it. Swearing was once a sin, and in proper french the word "bleu" replaced "Dieu" altogether. My Blue! Sacred Blue! By Blue! Etc. Blue ended up being the color of the French monarchs, and it is their color in most endeavors (like soccer). So there you go.

What Is French Culture?

Showings.

You keep hearing about French culture, and so you assume their taxes are high.

In the monthly Capital, the authors review the new Chirac-Raffarin government's plan to cut taxes by 30 billion euros over the next five years. They start with an analysis of the effectiveness of tax cuts. I defy you to find a single "financial" periodical published in the US that would not say "lower taxes are good for the economy". This one says "well, it's doubtful." Are the french just depressed pessimists, or are they really that liberal? They show Bush's 1.37 trillion dollar tax cut, and they have a little cartoon of him looking sad as the economic growth rate has plummeted. Apparently the Swedish and the Kiwis implemented big tax cuts in the 90s to good success.

But the most telling thing is the relative tax rates. Forgive me while I get Ross Perot on you and present a table:

Country	Sweden	France	Germany	UK	OECD Avg.	USA
Avg Tax Rate	57.3%	47.2%	43.1%	39.3%	36.2%	30.9%

Indeed, taxes are high here in France. However, chances are that you in the US know someone with no health insurance; whereas everyone here is covered and the World Health Organization ranks their quality of care as better than America's and most key indicators are better (despite what you hear from US politicians, and despite the fact that the US spends a greater portion of its larger GDP to cover a smaller proportion of its population). Chances also are that you know someone who didn't go to a fancy university because it cost a lot more than the local state school; all education, including the most elite institutions, are free in France. Clearly they don't suck, because lots of their graduates were good enough to take up slots at Stanford's aerospace engineering PhD program. America's elite institutions are better on the whole, but practically nobody (as a percentage) actually goes to them.

Today's Le Monde editorial is about culture, and the tradition among French presidents in the last 30 years of building grand monuments. L'Express also ran a critical piece lately. Georges Pompidou's cultural center is a winner, by all accounts. Mitterand had a lot of winners: the arch at La Defense, the pyramid at the Louvre, and the Tres Grande Bibliotheque that I study at.

The Mitt.

Consider, in a little detail, the case of Les Halles. Right in the center of the 1st arrondissment, it used to be a beautiful old covered marketplace. When that shifted to the periphery of the city, they built something widely considered to be awful. A subterranean mall with a very ugly, compartmentalized and therefore unsafe park.

One of the surprising occupants is the Forum Des Images. It's basically a government-supported movie library. You can walk in and get a day pass for $5, and watch any of their 6500 films or sit in whatever they are showing that day in their cinema. They show all kinds of avant-garde and classic stuff. And they put on a series of outdoor films ("Cinema Au Clair De Lune") during the summer, about 3 per week for the whole summer. And they are only 1 of 3-4 other public film "festivals" running through the season. There's also Cinema En Plein Air, and a few smaller ones. The city of Paris, on top of all that, has decided for 2002 to subsidize all tickets for people under age 26 at the arthouse cinemas: only $3. And for three days at the end of August, every single cinema in the whole city will charge only $3 for everyone. All brought to you by the government.

But back to Les Halles. So it's this big mall, right? Well, at night, it's pretty much closed. But you can still go in and out of it (partly to get to the movie theaters downstairs, or to get to the Metro station that's built into it). Kids show up there practically every night with boom boxes and hip hop tapes. They play the music and practice their B-boy moves (breakdancing and related stuff involving spinning on your head, sliding across the smooth mall-floor, etc). I think it must be known throughout Paris as the place to come -- there are dozens of kids their on most nights.

You could not do this at, say, the Manhattan Mall. There, an untrained privately-employed security guard/lout would just chase you out. Is it the fact that Les Halles is owned and operated by the government, and that its public-use spirit is part of its conception, that it can be co-opted by B-boys for breakdancing? Maybe. But the B-boys in the basement of Les Halles are as much the product of French culture as are the spontaneous quartets on the bridges of the Seine or the street-performers drawing huge crowds on the nighttime promenade at Paris Plage. There is a communal life in Paris, sponsored by the Mayor et al.

Dictionary for French, and another one for English

Something that keeps happening: I look up a french word, and find I have no clue about the english word.

Example, in Le Monde's complaint today about the long-running construction at many significant monuments, this sentence appears: L'édifice de Carlu, Boileau et Azéma abrite toujours les plâtres du Musée des monuments français, naguère fréquenté par des couples romantiques et quelques promeneurs neurasthéniques.

It means, roughly: The building by Carlu, Boileau and Azéma still shelters the plasters of the Museum of French Monuments, once frequented by romantic couples and some neurasthénique passersby.

Neurasthénique? Well the dictionary gives us this: "neurasthenic". Huh? Well, the term is apparently an archaic term from psychoanalysis, invented by Beard and borrowed/ruined by Freud. I think it roughly means "crazy", though should mean more precisely a condition of lassitude, worry, distraction, and hypochondria.

But it happens all the time, believe me. They're constantly naming peculiar architectural elements (like "a cymase") or whatever else. They also say "ignoble" a lot, which means exactly the same thing in English but knowing it would have ensured better results on the SAT.

The Cineastes of Paris

Monopoly capitalism breeds monoculture. Witness the selection of films playing in your home town. As of this moment, it should be ridiculously easy to see Goldmember or even Blue Crush, but difficult indeed to see Bananas by Woody Allen or Je ne m'aime plus directed by Serge Gainsbourg.

But in this age where it is easy enough to download Godlmember (I liked it), it remains difficult to download Aerograd, for example.

Witness here the selection of films showing in New York at this moment, from Yahoo's registry.

Now compare that to what's showing in Paris. You can see le Spider-Man, but you can also see Mulholland Drive and a termite documentary.

The Old Philosopher's Almanac of Paris

From Chatelet. 10 Aout.

If you loved Paris in the spring-time, might I recommend summer?

June, July average temperature was in the neighborhood of 70. I came with just a couple of "pullover" items and I wore them often. We were prepared for a hot August. Nothing doing. The French have been complaining for the last two weeks how it was not "summer" enough. I have been smiling as the sometimes-cloudy skies have kept things cool and easy-going. Beautiful evenings; not quite hot enough for shorts (only Americans and Germans wear them anyway), and not cold enough for jackets.

We spent last weekend at the Jardin de Luxembourg, doing some french exercises in the shade of a big tree.

Facing up to the facts, however, the northern latitude will soon bring its disadvantage: darkness at noon, to quote Koestler, but more like increasingly early evenings. I am told this is a gloomy place in the heart of winter, and perhaps that is true.

We will be gone by then. Though we have extended the stay: at least through September, and perhaps through October. There's really no reason to be back in the US just now (and if there will be war, terrorism, recession, and so on, perhaps not for a little while).

The Ears of Paris

The fine Canon Powershot G1 that I've been using for this site has developed a faulty button. Sending it to the factory in the US. Could be a little while before the photojournalistic flair to which you have been accustomed returns to this site.

France, where I won the bet

In November 2002, I was sporting a denim jacket covered with patches I had picked up on a recent tour of western national parks. This guy made fun of them so I bet him $500 that patches were cool, but more precisely: that they were so cool right then that in fact The Gap would not pick them up until Autumn 2002 at which time Gap would feature them in ads demonstrating their mass-market "coolness" (at which time they would be decidedly uncool, but whatever).

Snicker if you want, but I won the bet, Dan Schulman.

Gays on TV

Contestants. 10 Aout.

Here you see "Duos de l'ete", a gameshow like the Newlywed Game. Look closely at the couple that is second from the left.

Those two guys in matching haircuts and matching white shirts are homosexual partners. There's also one mixed race couple on the extreme right, and on the left there is one couple where the guy is really tall and the woman short.

In the Netherlands, apparently, you can get your "partner" a residency visa. In the US, you can't even see him/her in the hospital! Right, right -- Will & Grace exists, and so does David Letterman.

Several Brief Comments on Architecture

East Berlin. 28 Juillet.

Capitalism and Communism Ah, the smug feeling of staring at the Communist (Apartment) Bloc.

Endless, repeating, in cheap neutral color paint (low pigment content), concrete building materials, prefab components, weak gestures of resident customization (see the TV antennas on each balcony?), and the watery semblance of "luxury" for the "people" (balconies).

What struck me about this East Berlin apartment complex was how it delivered on all the Reagan-era criticisms of the Soviet Industrial dream.

What struck me next was it's resemblance to the General Grant Houses on 125th Street and Broadway in New York. Or, while you're at it, take your pick. All over America, in the 1960s, the poor were shuttered up in similar accomodations.

In fact, take a look at your local suburb (Bayside, Queens for example). More of it. Or the hills around Athens the downtown of Rio de Janeiro or, in fact, the banlieu here in Paris (Strasbourg-St-Denis).

Capitalism produced buildings not one whit better or more luxurious for its poor and downtrodden than did Erich Honecker.

CDG1. 26 Juillet.

60s Futurism The dominant meaning of the 1960s is upheaval and the birth of "boho". But hippies weren't building the big buildings. If you look at architecture, it is a period of enormous faith in technology, progress, and the new internationalism. You can see this, for example, at Indira Gandhi's home in New Delhi -- immaculately modernist with assemblages of developing country artifacts abounding.

One can imaging the architects of Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, constructing the first great continental airport. One sees their exuberance in the central interconnecting silo of CDG Terminal 1, where departing and arriving passengers criss-cross in mid-air in the ventral chamber of this great furnace of a building.

Unlike so much other architecture of this period (cf. Columbia's awful East Campus, the loathsome Memorial Library at Stanford, Madison Square Garden, most of Chicago, and so on), I solemnly judge this interior chamber of CDG1 to be a success. (The outside is neat too; they used this process on the concrete that makes it look like wood beams.)

Richeliu. 21 Juillet.

What Knowledge Looks Like When building a building, one realizes a conception of that facility's function. So too with libraries. Being a philosopher of cognitive science and speculative psychologist, I often think about the tradition of Western thought about cognition.

You may know the Cartesian conception of mental life; after all, it is more or less the prevalent one today. Any member of the laity will tell you: your mind is one thing, with much stored information on whatever specific topics. But thinking, or recalling, or other processes are something that take place within the metaphor of a single large "space".

A great big room, wherein the "Universal Instrument" does its prodigious work.

Two of the finest Parisian libraries are the former principal site of the national library, named for Cardinal Richeliu (the guy who helped Louis XIV the young king do his thing), and the Bibliotheque Mazarine, named for a wealthy gentleman-scientist who left his books to future scholars.

These are very beautiful libraries. And they are enormous, high-ceilinged open spaces of sunlight and reading tables, bordered with skyscraping shelves of books. You need ladders to get at them.

Mazarine. 30 Juillet.

Now here is what struck me about this. The modern cognitivist notion of "how the mind works" is not the Cartesian one, a discredited notion that does indeed make a lot of sense if all you go on is "how it feels" to think. Instead, the view from neuropsychology and the cognitive sciences is of a mind that has parts.

Not to toot the old horn here, but "the modular mind" is more or less the dominant view. That is--different pieces of your mind do different jobs and sometimes talk to each other but not always.

Now think about the modern library. In particular, think about a university-style library with its specialized bibliographic rooms, vast floors of domain-specialized collections, functionally separated chambers for preservation, historical documents, media-specific documents, course materials, and so on. That is: the modern library is the modern mind; and the classic libraries you see here are the Cartesian. To see the modern theory of thinking, see the library. Quad erat demonstrandum.

Posted by amol at 11:34 PM

Palais de Tokyo, Summer 2002

Sorry Wolfgang.

amol: what up bro theteenage: hey theteenage: where's teh professor today? amol: well, it's 9.30 already. but no class on friday anyway. amol: went to an art show at the Palais de Tokyo. amol: Then our favorite indian place...now we're home. theteenage: how was the show? amol: Oh it was really cool. amol: The Palais de Tokyo is like this fancy old museum building they built during the art deco style. amol: But they've gutted it and are redesigning it (I think). amol: So it's like a giant warehouse at the moment. amol: Well, they decided to pause for a bit and let these guys install this huge set of exhibits there. amol: Three really good things: amol: 1. Tillman -- amol: He's this photographer.Wolfgang Tillmans. Lots of interesting "abstraction" -- pairs of jeans, body parts, whatever. theteenage: I think i've seen his books amol: 2. Laurent Moriceau -- rad sculptures made of photographic paper. Rad presentation, in particular. Built this long winding tunnel, completely pitch black inside, Feel your way through this door/velvet curtain. Then you're in this room where the only light is these pillows with weird red lights inside. amol: There's furniture. But it looks like a boutique-type shop. They're "selling" "stuff" made from photographic paper. amol: Bras, masks, war medals, whatever. amol: But you can't put any real light on anything cuz it will destroy all the photo paper. Really cool eery red-room. amol: Inside the photographic process..the work of art as ephemeral object...the materialism of the room and the consumerism of the presentation...the "aura" of the room as if you were inside the artists brain... amol: 3. They don't have the third cool thing/guy name on the website -- amol: He installed a room (the living room) of The Museum of Contemporary African Art. amol: The room is literally a living room -- tables, couches, chairs, cool music, some TVs, computer with internet...whatever (remember it's a big warehouse). amol: So you go "hang out in it". theteenage: fun amol: I didn't even notice at first, but the coffee table is wood with this glass top..and has all these coins under the glass. amol: Cool. But then I suddenly notice that the wallpaper is made of all the currencies of africa -- 10,000 dollar bills from Ghana and shit. amol: THEN I realize that the patterns covering everything -- the couch the lampshades -- is these "dots". The dots are the size of the coins. Looks like coins. But the dots...are made of paper currency too! Euro notes etc. amol: Museumcorp and all that. theteenage: funny, i like detail work liek that amol: It's the 11th room of his "virtual" and "traveling" musem" that he's installed in a european museum theteenage: hes done eleven of then you mean? amol: he did ten so far, and this is the 11th. amol: yeah amol: Tillmans -- the "abstraction" is interesting. I haven't seen rough and meaty abstraction like that. Of course I've seen "patterns" or "design-like" photography of non-figurative sufraces... amol: beautiful pile of bricks or whatever. amol: But this is an attempt to do with abstraction to photography what was done to painting. Anti-figurative, criss-crossing "forms" -- like a pant leg and a shadow and some sand -- that don't like themselves or like anything in the frame of the photo. All the while the images are very "photographic" -- ultra-high resolution images with sharp color, detail, composition, light, etc. Just no figuration. theteenage: no people amol: Some of the photos had people....portraits etc. but the interesting 'abstraction' stuff didn't really. theteenage: james karales, siskind amol: some weird body part stuff too...his own anus...his armpit theteenage: yeah french people like armpits amol: funny that you say that!!! amol: There was his "insert" to Le Monde a few fridays ago. A mini-novel. amol: Very erotic. And the guy in the novel was obsessed with armpit hair...because it reminded him of another female body part theteenage: seriously amol: http://www.aaronsiskind.org/images.html theteenage: a photographer can mistke it if she isn't careful

The State of Springsteen, Radio Stars, and the 1980s

MacDo

The new album is out and they reviewed it in Le Monde. The opinion: it sucks. (Obligatory notings of blue-collar character and all.) The Economist was crueler -- pointing out the irony of the classically American "for profit" memorial album. Oddly, and you may already know this, the American press has been cloying. It's hard to criticize good intentions. Le Monde review of Springsteen.

If only it were a question of over-wrought memorials. Springsteen is back, after a 2 decade hiatus, to make some dough. Evidence: the record company didn't distribute critics copies of the album, because they were worried about Napsterization before release. Sign of the times.

Which brings us back to the 80s, in full force here in Paris 2002. Call me out of touch, but have you seen these trends on your side of the pond?
- mohawks, all over Paris youth. Not egg-yolked up, but sort of a skunky puff down the middle and often highlighted blond.
- jeans ripped, patched and sometimes with graffitti; and of course also with the patchy-fading stuff
- trench coats on girls (the tan ones, especially at clubs)
- 80s music -- dead-end/deep stuff like Rick Astley, Flock of Seagulls, Kylie (retro), i.e. not the stuff like New Wave that evolved into indie/emo/90s punk.
- I haven't seen it but it's got to be on the way: the Rubik's Cube.

Low, Low, Low. The Low Point

Last night at the Moulin Rouge. Let me dispense with post hoc commentary and give you the live feed:

Falling Stocks. 05 Aout.

"This sucks. Oh God, this is terrible. What time is it? It's only been one minute? Crap. This sucks. This sucks. I can't believe they just did that. [...edited for length...]"

The ultimate Parisian tourist trap. What, in fact, is the Moulin Rouge?

As the film would tell you: to the north of Paris there was a village called Montmartre, a bit of a laisser-faire district for the unusual characters. More or less, a red-light district. And so it is still, though Paris has grown to encompass this part of town (and McDonald's has installed itself there).

The Moulin Rouge ("red windmill", named after the way the girls kick their stockinged-legs in windmill fashion) is perhaps one of the oldest or grandest but surely the most famous.

And now they have a bawdy show there, twice a night with an additional dinner sitting. On average $100/seat.

Bawdy show? Think of the lowest, most miserable, tinny-music, painted-dancer, glitter-and-feather-costume, wooden-choreography splash you saw on your last lame bachelor party in Las Vegas. Except it's 2 hours long. Worst part: as the performers lazily rehearse their parts I could not escape the impression that they were thinking, "Keep on clapping you moron tourists!".

Le Renouvellisation de Paris

Now showing.

When this show opened in Paris, it was just weeks before modern France's showdown with its atavistic past. Literally millions of people took to the streets against Le Pen, and they may as well have stepped out of these photos. Klein has photographed the new Paris and the new French in the 25 years of photos on show here.

That was the political message then.

But there is another aspect: renewal. Paris renews itself, pastiche upon the classics. Just as they entertain rock concerts, pot smokers, World Cup boozing, summer beach volleyball and even "the Fastest Waiter in Paris" competitions in front of the Hotel de Ville, plausibly among Europe's most impressive buildings--just as they installed the massive Pyramid in front of the Louvre or built La Defense to echo the Arch de Triomphe--Paris constantly preserves and renews itself.

The french politicians are invariably interviewed in their beaux-arts offices with striking, colorful modern abstract paintings in the background.

Long-replaced, the palaces of the French kings are still sitting around: as art museums, tourist sites, public spaces, government buildings, and so on. Still around, but suddenly modern.

New York, on the other hand, is another thing.

Renewal? Buildings come down, sure enough: the old Penn Station, for example, or even the twin towers. And they are replaced. Cell by cell, the city erases its past and replaces.

There is a kind of preservation too: achieved through acts of law or litigation, for Historical sites. Such places don't get revised or updated.

Marilyn est mort

From Yahoo

French priorities.

Leading the news this Monday (a slow news day, typically, around the world): Attacks in Israel, Bush's economic problem, but starting off the report: Marilyn.

40th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death. I'm doubting this makes the US headlines today, what with wars, recessions and apocalypse bearing down on everyone.

La Belle Langue -- under the gun

As you may have heard, the lingua franca is under attack around the world. (Quick, what language is the phrase "lingua franca"? If you said french, wrong! If you said, english -- okay but no credit. The answer: latin.)

EU decides against French product label law. What law? The law that says all food products need to be labeled in French, not other languages (i.e. english). Hence, les ailes de poulet instead of "chicken wings".

The Germans have also opened an office to combat english words taking over.

Now here I present a speculation on this subject.

What they are worried about is the loss of their language, something they feel will happen in little creeping bits. That is, their language will become polluted with strange english words steadily...until...? Until what?

Until there are lots of foreign words in their language? Their language will somehow be less pure, I guess. What's the big deal about this? I venture to guess that neologisms are coined within the language far more rapidly than foreign words are borrowed, even if you let them say Buffalo Wings. Think about any language: in the last 5 years they have invented words/phrases for: mobile phone, internet, the twin towers, search engine, teen pop, boy band, wi-fi network, Frankenfood, etc. You get the idea. Language constantly changes its vocabulary -- adding, shedding, changing words. (Grammar too, but we'll come back to that.)

So, until what? Presumably until their whole language is gone. Maybe that is what they're worried about. If all the packages have english words on it...it'll soon just be easier to speak english. On this count, however, the fears are overblown. The vocabulary may change, but clearly the grammar stays the same. And the grammar is really the heart of it. That's why a dictionary will help you very little if you want to write a polite letter in french or give a speech to a french audience.

Two examples:

English word: shopping. French appropriation: "faire du shopping" -- to do some shopping. The structure is just like "faire des achats" or "faire des courses", which both just mean to do a little shopping. But you cannot say "Je voudrais shoper..." or whatever.

French phrase: "à la" as in "poulet au curry" or "torte à la mode". It literally translates as "something" + "to/at/like" + "another thing". English use: "pie a la mode". So that's: pie in the manner of the fashion. Okay, and I have also seen blah à la Jack or blah à la New York. But that's wrong! No "la". The phrase is just borrowed whole.

No danger, mon frère!

Soviet Bullet-holes

Restored Reichstag. 28 Juillet.

The Reichstag remains riddled with bullets. This contemporary government building, in the condition of the war-torn, burning capital.

But the bullet holes are patched over.

But not simply filled in with paving. Instead, delicately excavated and refilled with quadrangular fillings.

Disorder re-ordered? Scars healed or only bandaged?

Why did they choose to do it quite this way, just this funny way, with concrete that does not match?

Serious Security

U.S. Embassy. 29 Juillet.

In Berlin, you can't even get within a two blocks of the U.S. Embassy. It's right in the heart of downtown, and they have railroad cars and barbed wire blocking all access ways.

But if you thought we were "all in this together" -- i.e. that the Europeans were even slightly worried about equivalent types of terrorism -- you would be mistaken. They are not. While all kinds of US buildings are cordoned off with concrete blockades and guards, things are different in Europe.

The old terrorist threats have anti-terrorism policies to defend against them. So there's this VigiPirate program in France, originally started to prevent attacks from Algerian terrorists. But government buildings are not in the condition that U.S. sites are in.

That is to say: people expect attacks against the U.S. not their half-hearted allies. And therefore, isn't it nice to live under the global America security guarantee without paying the price (either in tax dollars or terrorist incidents)?

The Average # of Sexual Partners

The French are like readers of Cosmo: they love quizzes. In fact, they love surveys more. You cannot escape them; the figures are everywhere.

Today on the news: the average Frenchman has slept with 11 partners. The average Frenchwoman: 3.

!!

It doesn't add up. Yes, there are many gay men in Paris, but that can't do it all on its own. (Can it?) It must be, as usual, the Floridian tradition of ballot-stuffing by boys, and minimization by les dames.

"One can detest Salvador Dali the man."

Two Berlins. 28 Juillet.

Today in Le Monde one of the "most popular" articles (online) is a dissection of Dali.

The man was bizarre, and for all the competition, he was not the master painter that was Picasso nor the master publicist that was Warhol.

Salvador Dali Sr., his father, had a son named Salvador Dali in 1901. But he died in less than two years. Then he had another Salvador Dali, the one Andre Breton mocked with the anagram on his name "Avida Dollars".

A queer doubling for this man, straight from the start.

It was on his schoolroom wall where he discovered a reproduction of L'Angélus by Millet, an image on which he would later discover an infant's coffin in the depiction of a sack of potatoes--later confirmed by X-rays of the painting at the Louvre.

Then there is the perverse sexual/mortal obsession with grasshoppers (which started when he was a kid--his mother had "eaten" his brother/father to produce him as the female grasshopper mates by consuming her partner?) and all the blank pages he signed (for money) but then later claimed to be forgeries.

Currently running in Paris: Klein + Paris photo show, Daniel Buren's "the museum that didn't exist" show at Pompidou, "Chere Peintre" review of 90s portraiture, and lots more besides.

The Mayor of Paris

In spite of the worldwide turn toward conservative national governments from Lisbon to Moscow no doubt but also from Washington to Jerusalem to Delhi to Seoul, the new mayor of Paris, Monsieur Bertrand DELANOE is: gay and communist (well, socialist). He is the man that opened a beach (complete with trucked in sand) on the banks of the Seine.

The mayor of Paris is like the Governor of California. Jacques Chirac was mayor of Paris before he was le President de la Republique.

Advertising on TV

Some odd things about the TV:
1. There are 3 or 4 channels that seem to be publicly owned and operated like the BBCs 1 and 2 in the UK. They present "cultural" programming far more. The other night we watched a 4 hour, live documentary about St. Petersburg, a city built very much in the image of the French style its builder admired (but Italian too; Peter the Great was one of these modernisers like Kaiser Frederick II of Germany I talked about previously).

2. Commercials are marked as "publicité" on all the channels. Apparently to avoid the chance that you are fooled by the nature of the commercials.

3. The frequency of commercials during the program is much lower. Someone said this was actually regulated by the government. Only 2 interruptions per show, and they can't last more than a few minutes. Compare this to the WB in New York, in particular when they are showing movies. The breaks go on forever!

4. There are no commercials whatsoever during children's shows like cartoons. Just none at all!

5. Hardly any sitcoms like we are used to in the US. This "fast food" of the TV consumption universe essentially doesn't exist, except for "Friends" which seems to turn up a fair bit (dubbed).

6. The shows are funny lengths. Since they cut out most of the commercial time, the shows are only like 40 minutes or 22 minutes long. Strange starting times as a result on some of the cable channels.

7. Some channels are obviously "European" and not French. That is: they have a minimum of talking where possible. This is true of Much Music, Fashion TV, and Euronews. They shows videos/clothing/news without voice-over announcers from time to time. I am convinced they are broadcasting the same video to Chechnya with local announcers piped over it.