Comments on: Being moved by art

By: snackywombat

snackywombat — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 02:39:16 +0000

chris noth’s leather jackets — that’s the greatest thing ever. after i left the first time, i didn’t miss new york for the longest time until i saw an exhibit of walker evan’s photography that included his photos he took secretly of people on the subway. the photos were hysterical and weird and beautiful. i missed the anonymity and the closeness and the feeling of being right in the middle of it — i moved back soon after that.

By: paperhaus

paperhaus — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:31:22 +0000

Andrew – I was thinking not of the place itself but the art that creates myths of place. People who flocked to Seattle/Silverlake for their music scenes were people who wanted to be in the physical presence of those bands, hear those musicians, play on those bills, sleep with them, make posters for them, bask in their real live rock glory.

Whereas someone who stands on that corner in Winslow, Arizona is stepping into the illusion of a decades-old song. Gloria may have let the Istabul of Palmuk’s imagination lure her to the city, but she didn’t actually think she’d be sitting in cafes with his characters. There is a difference between the cultural life of a place and the artistic (even mythic) representations of that place.

I know this isn’t about the substance of Gloria’s essay, but what might I contribute to a discussion of teaching literature and an internationalist perspective to college students in Turkey? Not much. You’re right: tangential was the idea.

By: Atak

Atak — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:15:19 +0000

While discussing artistic efforts that have drawn people to other cities, I’m surprised you didn’t mention the way music scenes have drawn youth to move to a variety of backwater towns or neglected neighborhoods – we all experienced that here in Silverlake, and you probably experienced a similar phenomena in Williamsburg -

Of course these neighborhood/city booms are also driven by lifestyle factors outside of art and culture, but remain an subject of continuing fascination for me – Is there a new Athens/Seattle/Chapel Hill developing right now?

All of this is a bit tangential to the point of Gloria’s essay which seems more about encouraging a dialogue with her students about a nation’s official history and outside perception of that nation.

For me the only real parallel lies in my love for the HBO series the Wire, which does inspire a bit of curiousity about Baltimore – A city that in recent years has given us such a broad range of cinematic output, from the polymorphous perversity of John Waters to the over polished nostalgia of Barry Levinson and finally David Simon’s bleak, but poetic take on the modern American city.