With No Particular Place to Go

Since Jan. 6, 2010, and for 191 consecutive Wednesdays thereafter, we’ve explored in this space the concept of placeness, specifically placeness as art, and we even coined a pseudo-Latin-ish term, “arslocii,” to use as a tent in which to gather together our musings, monologues and misgivings.

We started off as purists, adhering rather rigidly to our stated mission of writing about art and site, and how each impacts the other and imparts a power to (or subtracts the same from) each other, so that because of this relationship, symbiotically, each has a certain “something” it did not have before, and has become something it was not before – and that together they are not two things but one. Placeness. Arslocii.

Soon, however, ideas and truths and suppositions led us further afield: consideration of the role empathy plays in the perception of art and place, the placeness of “places” that don’t actually exist (“homes” that appear in fiction-based TV shows, the Glass houses of Salinger’s stories), the placeness of highway entry ramps and the space circumscribed by plastic traffic cones or gabions, the placeness of places inhabited and deserted and left behind by death. And then, frankly, we wrote about things that merely caught our attention or plucked our emotions, and we took out the sturdy arslocii shoehorn and made them fit, and tried to walk without anyone noticing our pronounced limp and our bloody toes.

Arslocii and looking at the world through it became our life, and we can’t envision a time when we will stop seeing things in that way. But we do envision a time when our clockwork entries will stop. And that time is now.

We’ll still be contributing to Arslocii, but on an every now and then basis, as we divert much of our energy and efforts to other, long-term projects that we will let you know about. Those who’ve signed on to receive these blog posts regularly will see them from time to time, like house guests who, kindly, have brought their own sheets, towels and food; those who check in to this site in a hit or miss fashion might, if you continue doing so, bump into something new to read … or not.

Thanks for your interest in what we’ve thought about; we hope to earn that interest again with our newer pursuits. As the departing Mr. Wickham said to the relieved Bennets, “Let us say not farewell, but as the French have it, au revoir!”

See you soon, then, some place else.

Cones of Silence

Can there be so many traffic cones on residential streets that you become immune and stop noticing them? Cones are all around this city neighborhood – cone overload. The reason is ubiquitous new-home construction. One would never guess that the housing market is down; not here. Every scrap of empty ground in this super-packed, cheek-to-jowl area is being covered with new construction; squeezed in the way road cones squeeze moving traffic into too-narrow lanes. In the service of producing these new constructs, the utility companies are busy as robins in the spring, digging up entire streets that extend for several blocks and lining them all with road cones, much like a highway. It is the one colorful result of new houses.

Cones are friendly, geometric and orange, and they can be jarring, especially to alert a driver going the distance on highways. Out on the open road, we sort of know what they are saying and what we are supposed to do when we see them. On a tight 19th-century city street, they squeeze the limited space further, and stand there resembling a queue of penguins on the march, so that they take on a kind of human or pedestrian presence. And, as pedestrians ourselves, we aren’t quite used to face-to-face interaction with a life-size cone. Should we weave through them like a test course? What is the protocol?

In addition to work zones, cones in the city often represent proprietary space; they can seem in-your-face. Since it is utility companies that use them mostly, homeowners feel that they can nab one or two – since they are taxpayers – and employ them to stand guard and save the parking space directly in front of their door. This strategy is used mostly after a snowfall, but some sticklers decide that it is a useful year-round ploy.

The original traffic cones, though, invented in 1914 by Charles Rudabaker, were for the streets of New York – so their provenance is urban. And they were concrete. Try scooting around one of those. They have been made of various materials including wood, plastic, thermoplastics and rubber. And they can range in size from 12 inches to 36 inches. They are usually reflective, aside from their bright, primary palette. With stripes of reflective tape, they remind me of the legs of Munchkins with their stripey socks. They are party hats for the pavement, or maybe dunce caps.

Generally speaking, the cones tend to be recognizable. But what is this?

 

A new modern simulacrum of a road cone? Did they run out of the three dimensional ones? They seem makeshift and clever all at once. Like signboards, they are flat but appear full-bodied. They, too, are orange. Plywood, a two-by-four – kind of an easel, but already painted. The weird thing is, these new brethren make the normal cones look fake. Probably, these new cones are less likely to disappear.

It seems that cones are popular. People do goofy things with them; they wear them, they make art out of them. In 2007, artist Dennis Oppenheim made five giant-sized ones, called “Safety Cones,” for the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle and other places worldwide – perhaps a tip of his hat to Oldenburg and van Bruggen. A New York City architecture firm, EFGH, built a concert pavilion out of cones.

Cones have become iconic, they are like a universal sign before there were universal signs. They create a placeness wherever they are plopped down. They now decorate my neighborhood. We like them, even with their pointy heads.