Daily Archives: September 7, 2022

The children of 12th Street from 60-12 Club, the streets newsletter | Courtesy of the Trachtenberg family

The word utopia, coined by 15th-century English writer Thomas More, is based on the Greek words eu-topos, which means a good place, and ou-topos, which means no place.

The term was meant to show the idealized, just-out-of-reach nature of a perfect place. Certainly, a place that appeared so faultless could not possibly exist without a catch or shortcoming.

Some of the former residents of East Oak Lane would beg to differ. Hugged between North 11th and Camac streets on one side, and Marvine and 13th streets on the other, the 6000 block of North 12th Street was home to about 50 families, most of them Jewish, in the 1940s and 50s.

The residents remember the neighborhood the same way: Children addressed adults as aunt and uncle; no one locked their doors; everyone had a part in the annual Chanukah performance; and the street on a hill was transformed into a sledding haven in the winter, when the streets fathers stood at the top and bottom to block off incoming cars, and the children spent the later afternoons and weekends treading through mounds of snow.

Eighty years after the cohort of residents moved to North 12th Street, the surviving children, now septuagenarians and octogenarians, will gather for a reunion on Sept. 10 in Rittenhouse. The meet-ups theme, 12th Street: Myth or Reality, puts the neighborhoods utopic status to the test.

All of us think that everything wonderful happened on 12th Street, said Joan Cohen, 79, a former 12th Street resident. Anything bad or negative that happened in our lives happened after 12th Street.

The group of 30-40 surviving residents last convened in the early 2000s, and the cohort believes that the upcoming gathering will be one of the last opportunities to meet and share stories of a unique upbringing.

We are all brimming over with memories, Cohen said.

Cohen and her sister Alice Fisher both were born and grew up on 12th Street, the children of young parents looking to settle down during a tumultuous time in United States history. On the eve of World War II and following the Great Depression, many couples found refuge in the less-developed East Oak Lane section of North Philadelphia and had children at around the same time.

As the children grew, the trees grew that kind of thing, Cohen said. It was a new street, and I think they all wanted to be friends. Most of them had lived in different neighborhoods, whether it was South Philly or Kensington. They came from many different neighborhoods as single people prior to getting married.

The neighbors, according to former 12th Street resident Steve Trachtenberg, were relatively homogeneous in age and religious and cultural backgrounds. The commonalities laid the groundwork for the kids and parents to grow close.

There was going to be interaction from the beginning, from 2-year-old birthday parties up to bar mitzvahs X number of years later, Trachtenberg explained. The result was that associations, for whatever sociological reasons, were formed, and they just happened to be particularly close. Whether or not the war brought them together, the Jewish background brought them together, the common age brackets, the common socioeconomic brackets it wound up producing a series of people who sought and got the company of the rest of the street.

Fisher remembers playing hopscotch and jump rope with the other neighborhood children. She recalls a mother in the neighborhood who was musical and wrote an annual Chanukah show, giving each child a small part, and fondly remembers the annual Memorial Day picnic at what is now Breyer Woods. Cohen still remembers her neighborhood talent show performance of Im Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair from the Broadway show South Pacific.

In their childhood naivete as well as in the streets culture of not speaking ill of others Cohen and Fisher were raised to believe that any differences among the streets children were inconsequential.

Growing up, in our house we never talked about anybody, Fisher said. I didnt know who was old, who was young. I didnt know who was rich, who was poor. Everybody was the same. It was like a family.

What surprised the surviving 12th Street residents most about the neighborhood connections was that all the parents got along, particularly the men.

The parents had an unusual association, Trachtenberg said. The men played cards every Friday night, alternating between the homes. The woman played their card game; they were playing once or twice a week. The street, as a whole, did things together.

The adults maintained a newsletter 60-12 Club, which included weather forecasts, letters to the editor and results, with photos, of the streets Halloween party and costume contest. Men took their wives on vacation to Grossingers or Concord in the spring. On Shabbat, though families belonged to different synagogues, many would walk substantial distances to attend services together.

On the High Holidays, extended family would move in; the neighbors would still have personal connections with others aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmothers, who would cook the Rosh Hashanah meals for each household.

The whole street smelled like brisket one time, Fisher said.

In hindsight, however, Fisher and Cohen did notice some financial differences among the families that were not clear to them when they were children. While some households had a new Cadillac parked in their driveways, others had old cars.

Im safe in saying that nobody knew or cared enough, Trachtenberg said. It just was the way it was.

Though the former residents of 12th Street unanimously remember their time in the neighborhood fondly despite socioeconomic differences, they were not untouched by tragedy or troubles.

The polio epidemic of 1952 pervaded the summers of Cohen and Fisher, who attended sleepaway camp at Kittatinny. One year, the campers had to stay on the campgrounds for 10 extra days; a 14-year-old girl from the neighborhood had died of the virus.

The sisters knew of a couple in the neighborhood who would argue with one another. In one instance, Fisher and Cohens next-door neighbor became upset with them one summer day when Cohen was 6. With the windows and screens in all the homes open, the woman sprayed her hose into Fisher and Cohens living room window.

That was like the worst thing I ever remember, Fisher said.

However, the neighborhood children, though their memories are self-admittedly softened by time, endured real hardship.

Fisher and Cohens mother died young at age 50. Steve Trachtenberg and his brother Drew lost their father when Drew was 4.

Though they remember the sadness of the losses, Fisher, Cohen and Trachtenberg also remember how the families lifted each other up in times of devastation.

My mother was a very strong person internally. She had a strong sense of family, Trachtenberg said. Everybody recognized she was as capable as anybody would be at handling the loss. The amount of support that she got from the neighbors throughout that period of time was just extraordinary.

Nobody was alone in their troubles, Fisher added.

Though tight-knit for about two decades, the golden era of 12th Street came to an end in the 1960s, when the children of the neighborhood left for college, though many ended up staying in the city and continued to keep in touch over the years.

The parents, more financially comfortable and with emptier houses, relocated to the suburbs, with many families moving to Wyncote.

The conclusion to the cohorts time in the neighborhood felt natural, with everyone going their separate ways, though the time left a lasting mark on the residents.

I never mourned in any way or grieved at all about the passage of 12th Street. I never did, Cohen said. I always felt that it had endowed me with tremendous strength and warmth and understanding and caring and just relationships that seasoned during my whole life It was my foundation.

Those two decades on 12th Street remain even more anomalous because of the period in which they existed.

Today, Trachtenberg said, the grandchildren of the residents want to attend college outside of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

Nobody stays in one place anymore, he said.

As young people move around more to seek out economic opportunity, theres less of a chance of a group of people, especially majority Jewish, settling into a neighborhood and collectively raising their children there. Recreating the environment of 12th Street is near impossible, Trachtenberg believes.

For now, the 12th Street of the 1940s and 1950s will likely remain as a memory for the few dozen who lived in the idyllic neighborhood. Though Sept. 10 will likely be one of the last times a large group of former residents meets in person, the reunion attendees can take solace in sharing stories, knowing they didnt take their upbringings for granted.

Even the 8-year-olds and 12-year-olds were aware, at some level, of the fact that not everybody was going to a Chanukah party at some restaurant that was attended by virtually everybody on the street, Trachtenberg said. And not everybody was going to have a street where all the parents went to the Poconos for a weekend during the summer.

We had a sense of the uniqueness then that was a valuable part of the memory, he added.

[emailprotected]

Read more:

Utopia Revisited: Residents Reunite to Share Stories of 12th Street Childhood - Jewish Exponent

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If wonder is the beginning of wisdom, lets listen to all that inspires. Coming into spring, as the southern hemisphere blossoms, so should our sense of awe bracing ourselves for all the possibility that is yet to flourish. We say salut! with Salut and their trackAir, which feels like we are being carried like blossom on a breeze into Roger DoylesSpring is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth, a pleasant reminder to eat more fruit and that above all else, [we] want to be loved.'

Once mechanical synths have decayed away, we are grounded by more the more organic guitars of Half Japanese, in their wonderous world of wonderous wonder, giving us a brand new start for a brand heart. Cass McCombs follows with his take on a new earth, birds return to their homes and junkies are reborn as a new utopia comes to us after a very, very bad day. We fall into theMoonshineof Nightlands and visit Paris in 1985. HAAi embraces the wonder of bodies of water, whilst Puro Instinct remind us of the subjective nature of awe after all, its whatwesee that give us a sense of all-encompassing beauty.

From the magnetic fields of Alex Chiltern, to the Mother of Pearl of Scribble, then to the Wild Flowers of Mark Lanegan, this playlist should promote diverse sensations, speaking to all aspects of amazement. Angel Olsen takes us to a fascinatingDream Time,followed closely by Poly Styrenes version of a surreal and lo-fi dreaming.

As we ground ourselves in a spring that is being sprung, we realise that Louis wasnt wrong, as we think to ourselves, its a wonderful world.

Looking for more 'Wonder' content? Get to know our 'Wonder' cover star Yilan Hua.

Go here to see the original:

'Wonder' Playlist: The sounds that inspired our new issue - RUSSH

"This Building Belongs to the People": Cape Verdes New Centre for Art, Crafts and Design

Facebook

Twitter

Mail

Pinterest

Whatsapp

Or

There are two ways to get to Cape Verde, by sea or sky. Either way, we are surprised by the landscape of immense rocky masses sprouting from the Atlantics navel before setting foot on land. Unpopulated until the middle of the 15th century, the volcanic archipelago is made up of ten islands, nine of which are currently inhabited, with unique characteristics in each one of them some more touristy, like Sal, others more rural, like Santo Anto and a version of Kriolu Kabuverdianu, which is not the official language (Portuguese occupies this place), but which is by far the most widely spoken.

So Vicente is the second most populous island in the country and makes up the northern insular group called Sotavento, along with Santo Anto, Santa Luzia, So Nicolau, Sal and Boa Vista. Its largest city, Mindelo, has a port vocation and has historically been the point of departure and arrival for people and goods. Marked by traffic, the city is a place of passage and intense cultural exchanges. It is also home to the first museum built in the country, the National Centre for Art, Crafts and Design CNAD.

+ 18

Opened at the end of July, the new CNAD is the result of a long process that had the support of the Ministry of Culture and Creative Industries of Cape Verde and the Federal Government. In addition to the new museum built from scratch, designed by the local firm Ramos Castellano Arquitectos, the project also includes the rehabilitation of Casa Senador Vera-Cruz, one of the oldest buildings in Mindelo, started in 2019.

The project was entirely financed by the Government of Cape Verde and cost 120 million Cape Verdean escudos (about US$1.1 million). With a collection area, exhibition rooms, library, and space for artistic residencies, the National Centre for Art, Crafts and Design seeks to become a reference as a platform for sustainable cultural development and promotion. We sowed utopia to reap a brand new verse, says Irlando Ferreira, Director General of CNAD, after years of work managing the demands and needs of government bodies, artists and artisans.

If today the institution extends its arms over arts and design, it keeps its feet firmly planted on crafts. It was created from it, in 1976, as Cooperativa Resistncia, a group formed by artists and teachers led by Manuel Figueira, Lusa Queirs and Bela Duarte. The group was dedicated to the experimentation, investigation and promotion of Cape Verdean handicrafts, in particular weaving, seeking in traditional and popular knowledge transmitted by master artisans, such as Nh Griga and Nh Damsio bases to foster the development of new artisans and artists.

Bonding with the population is embedded in the origin of CNAD. The reason of this building is to belong to the people, being close to them, comments the architect Eloisa Ramos. In other words, we wanted to break down all possible barriers, allowing people to move around here at will, without distancing themselves. The result is this building that, despite being imposing, does not create distance, she concludes. Eloisa, born in Santo Anto Island, is one of the architects responsible for the rehabilitation of the old Casa Senador Vera-Cruz and for the design of the new CNAD building, together with the Italian Moreno Castellano. Together they form the Ramos Castellano Arquitectos studio, based in Mindelo, which has in its portfolio Terra Lodge Hotel and Casa Celestina, both in the same city, and Aquiles Eco Hotel, in So Pedro.

For the CNAD project, they sought inspiration from a material that is common in everyday life on the islands of Cape Verde: the bidons, or cylindrical drums made of metal or plastic. Almost all the goods that arrive on the islands, sent by relatives of residents who went to look for better economic conditions in other countries, arrive inside these drums. With 560,000 inhabitants living in the archipelago and almost a million living outside it, it is conceivable that the influx of drums is quite voluminous.

After traveling the sea bringing goods from other continents mainly Europe and North America, but also South America and Asia these metal containers are recycled and incorporated into the daily lives of residents in a variety of ways. It is not unusual to find tin houses made with the metal plate of the drums, or pans and other tools made from parts of them. There are countless uses, and we find traces of drums everywhere, especially in communities far from urban centers.

The drums end up revealing a social, cultural, and economic dimension of the country, comments Irlando Ferreira, and here they were re-signified to constitute the second skin of the building. The lid and the circular bottom of the drums were used to compose a mosaic that envelops the new building. Set about a meter away from the glass faade that encloses the internal spaces, and accessed by a narrow service corridor, this skin works as a screen against the strong Sahelian sun. An elaborate manual mechanism allows the drums to be rotated, controlling the level of brightness and insolation in the interiors. There is no air conditioning, the environmental comfort systems are all passive, reveals Eloisa.

What stands out the most, however, are the colors of the building. Each of the hundreds of lids is given a color, and in this palette is encoded a musical score composed by the Cape Verdean multi-instrumentalist and conductor Vasco Martins. A color for each note (the intervals are also painted) and the rhythm of the faade is literally given by the music. In front of this score, the Casa Senador Vera-Cruz, now without walls, opens up to the city. Between the buildings, a rectangular square provides additional space for the CNAD program and connects the side streets, serving as a shortcut through the urban fabric of Mindelo.

Open to the people, the city and the world, looking at the past and the present, the new CNAD stands in Mindelo as a dream for the future. But not just any future, a future that brings us the past, being diaspora and island, comments Abrao Anibal Barbosa Vicente, Minister of Culture and Creative Industries. Indeed, the National Centre for Art, Crafts and Design seeks to honor the institutions past as a promoter of popular knowledge the exhibition Cape Verdean Creation: Routes, curated jointly by Irlando Ferreira and Adlia Borges, bears witness to this. However, it avoids sinking into nostalgia, and keeps its focus firmly on the development of young artisans and artists.

The fulfillment of a project of this importance in a country with just over half a million inhabitants is an admirable achievement; program maintenance, in turn, will continue to be a challenge. It's a utopia, adds Irlando.

But Cape Verdeans are no strangers to this: I grew up listening to my father, who was a farmer, talking about waiting for the rain. You put the seed in the ground and wait for the water, and then you ought to have faith, because you believe the rain will fall. You have to believe in order to survive, Eloisa told me. It hadn't rained on the island of So Vicente for four years and the arid landscape testified to that. We have an expression here that says sow in the dust, adds Irlando, because the earth is so dry that it has already turned to dust and, even so, you put the seed inside waiting for it to sprout. I no longer knew whether he was talking about plantations in the countryside or the arduous work made by the institution he directs, but I felt that, after the sowing was done, we all myself included believed that the harvest was, at long last, possible.

Read the original post:

"This Building Belongs to the People": Cape Verde's New Centre for Art, Crafts and Design - ArchDaily

Bjrk has shared the lead single from her forthcoming album, Fossora. Directed by Viar Logi, the Atopos video takes place in a fungal underworld, where a masked Bjrk, a bass clarinet sextet, and Gabber Modus Operandis DJ Kasimyn gear up for a rave showdown. Watch it happen below.

Bjrk wrote on Twitter yesterday that the track is kinda like Fossoras passport. The album, out September 30, was partly inspired by the pandemic experience and lockdown raves. Its title is a word that Bjrk made upthe feminine of fossore, which means digger, delver, ditcher, as she put it in press materials.

Fossora is the follow-up to 2017s Utopia. Bjrk recently launched a podcast called Bjrk: Sonic Symbolism. The first three episodes document Debut, Post, and Homogenic.

Check out Revisiting Bjrks First Film, The Juniper Tree, In Honor of Its Restoration over on the Pitch.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Read the original here:

Bjrk Parties at a Mushroom Rave in Video for New Song Atopos: Watch - Pitchfork

So, its over. Stop the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the hoards from nicking the pink pastel thrones. Notorious woman-centric members club and co-working space The Wing is dead.

Once billed by its co-founder and entrepreneurial it-girl Audrey Gelman as a womens utopia, and your throne away from home, The Wing opened in 2016 to a flurry of fanfare and media attention. On the surface, the concept was simple: charge professional women between 170 and 240 a month for access to luxurious, maximalist, millennial-pink spaces where they could work, network, and eat poached egg dishes called Fork the Patriarchy. Its first outpost was located in New Yorks Flatiron district, in the historic stretch known as Ladies Mile its where well-off women shopped in the 19th century. Within weeks, it had found its place among the Lena Dunham-adjacent coterie of New York City, counting Alexa Chung, Tavi Gevinson, Emilia Clarke and Cara and Poppy Delevingne among its founding members. By the end of 2019, The Wing had 11 locations, including a five-storey townhouse in Londons Fitzrovia.

For The Wings members, the end came abruptly. An email sent out on Tuesday (30 August) announced that all Wing locations would be closing permanently, blaming an inability to recover financially from the Covid pandemic and increasing global economic challenges. Members access halted with immediate effect. Within hours of the closure being made public, the company appeared to have deleted Instagram comments from members asking about previously booked commitments at Wing locations. Then it locked comments on its photos altogether. At the time of writing, there has been no acknowledgement on the platform of the shutdown its most recent grid post is from a fortnight ago, urging ladies of luxury, leisure and well-heeled creative labour to treat [themselves] to a personalised tour of The Wing and stay the day! What a difference two weeks makes.

Yet, for those looking in from the outside, The Wings demise didnt feel so sudden. Indeed, when the announcement came, it seemed inevitable. Even overdue The Wings kitsch corporate playgrounds had already begun to look like fossils from a bygone era. Turmeric lattes. Egg chairs. Colour-coordinated bookcases. All now as distinctly late 2010s as inflatable furniture is to the late 1990s.

In retrospect, The Wing seemed to neatly express the micro-epoch in which it was founded encapsulating both the fetishes and deficiencies of girlboss feminism. The writing was always on the wall, attached as securely as the portraits of Hillary Clinton, Mary Beard, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Amal Clooney and other #inspirational industry leaders and feminist pin-ups that lined The Wings hallways. Truly, The Wing simultaneously slamming the locks on its Instagram comments and the clubhouse doors is too perfect an emblem for the last nails being hammered into the coffin of the girlboss. And so, let the next round of discourse proclaim: The Wing died doing what it loved, a neat symbol until the end.

Its funny, the things that come to represent certain cultural landscapes and pockets of time. The Wing always garnered undue levels of attention, given at its peak it hosted just 12,000 members across its 11 locations. A not insignificant number, but last year Soho House another notorious, overdesigned, expensive and exclusive club for like-minded creative thinkers comparatively had 119,000 members across 27 houses in 10 countries. Even when it comes to cold hard cash, The Wing wasnt an outlier. Membership to its London Soho outpost cost roughly the same as its nearby club competitor, with an annual fee of 1,836 to Soho Houses 1,300. Plus the 400 registration fee. Though it was practically budget when held up against the 3,250 annual rate (plus 1,750 joining fee) for Mayfairs Marie-Antoinette-cum-British-colonial-soft-play club Annabels. Supposedly the only nightclub the Queen has ever stepped foot in, Annabels proves that, when it comes to girlbosses, there are more rungs to be climbed than the average Lean In/Goop/Glossier/Lululemon/Lena Dunham/ But Her Emails cap-wearing girl could ever dream of.

But it was never really just about the money. The thing that distinguished The Wing and launched a thousand column inches and cemented its status as a millennial burlesque was the very public nature of a supposedly private members club, and its worthiness. At heart, both amounted to hypocrisy.

Audrey Gelman interviews Jennifer Lawrence at New Yorks The Wing Soho in 2018

(Monica Schipper/Getty for The Wing)

The Wing was founded on a paradox. Its business aped one of societys most elitist institutions the private members club while its brand was steeped in the language of feminist emancipation and empowerment. Theyve tried to make it mean a million different things, said Scarlett Curtis, Wing member and editor of Feminists Dont Wear Pink (And Other Lies), in 2019. There were mums with side hustles, and journalists, coders and people in tech. Curtis claimed that The Wings ethos was more of a political stance. They are left wing: very pro-diversity, pro-inclusivity. Its very intersectional feminism.

Except, of course, it absolutely wasnt. How could it be? Exclusivity was as essential to The Wing as the marble chips in its terrazzo tables. When a racist incident at The Wings West Hollywood location came to light in 2019, it set off a spiral of revelations about the company that, while not exactly surprising, undermined its intersectional feminist ethos to the point it was unrecoverable. Asha Grant, the director of the Free Black Womens Library of Los Angeles, reported that she had arrived at the groups Hollywood location only to encounter an angry white woman in the parking lot, upset that Grant had snagged a spot she felt belonged to her. Grant alleged that the woman a guest at The Wing followed her inside yelling insults and threats. She also added that, after the harassment, Wing staff didnt ask the white woman to leave, telling her they didnt feel empowered to do so. It was another example of White womens comfort prioritised over Black womens pain, Grant said.

Yet, while this is plainly and evidently true, there turned out to be some further truth in the claim that Wing staff didnt feel empowered. Indeed, many subsequently reported that the companys working culture was rooted in fear and exploitation that working class, immigrant and Black staff were disrespected, underpaid and used for marketing clout. In June 2020, Gelman resigned from her role as CEO. Shortly after, staff organised a digital walkout in protest over The Wings prioritisation of public appearance over working practice. Roxanne Fequiere, who took part in the digital walkout before resigning from the company, said that The Wings response was at once affirmative and lacklustre, as though our leadership couldnt be bothered to convincingly feign any more enthusiasm for accountability.

The Wings closure hasnt changed this pattern. Naydeline Mejia is assistant editor at Womens Health but previously worked for The Wing. The morning after members received the shutdown email, Mejia tweeted that she was just thinking about all the immigrant, non-rich & non-white women who ran that place that are now without jobs. Women who had been working for the company quickly replied to Mejia, thanking her for acknowledging them. One said that, after Tuesday nights email, she found herself randomly unemployed without a plan. Again, a neat symbol until the end now of malpractice and the avoidance of accountability.

Exclusive, while preaching inclusivity. Sermonising about the value of womens work, while practising workplace exploitation. Claiming intersectionality, while allowing racism to go unchecked. The Wing modelled itself on Britains elite, old-money hang-outs, while also declaring itself an antidote to old boys networks and the politics of Trump; it wanted community and equality and to always, above all, be market-friendly; it was a confused, hypocritical recipe doomed to fail.

Gelman often told The Wings origin story roughly as follows: she was working as a press secretary, and later as an aide to Hillary Clintons election campaign, dashing from city to city and between meetings and parties. It was a lifestyle that supposedly forced her to change her clothes in the bathrooms of Starbucks and train stations, places she said she found semi-degrading. She dreamt of having a more dignified place to go, where like-minded women could find one another, get changed and charge their phones in peace.

Its a story that also reveals the roots of The Wings downfall, and the essential nastiness behind the glossy be kind facade of girlboss feminism. Today, Starbucks workers in the United States are fighting to unionise, while labour movements on both sides of the pond are reinvigorated. Yet here we have a story about a centrist it-girl on her way to a political party, detecting degrading conditions in Starbucks bathrooms and other public spaces mainly utilised by the working classes. Her big solution? To create an untouchable haven for herself and her social circle that would be as far removed from them as possible. What could be less radical, progressive or intersectional than that?

Go here to read the rest:

The girlbosses who girlbossed too close to the sun: The demise of womens utopia The Wing was long overdue - The Independent