The Arts in New York City

One of my biggest issues with the Village the few times that I’ve ventured to the area was that it is impossible to maneuver. The streets all seem to converge and unless you’ve committed the street names to memory, even the best sense of direction will need assistance. Even when we went to see Asuncion, we shared adventures of getting lost and/or followed, and if I recall, Professor Healey mentioned that even the people who live in the Village don’t know their way around.

Despite my quarrels with the layout of the village, I was excited to be assigned this neighborhood, because quite frankly, I’m never there. That being said, my group decided that our meeting place would be Washington Square Park, an area often depicted as an artistic experience in and of itself. However, as I arrived to the park, I couldn’t help but feel off put by the construction that was going on and the grass all being fenced off. How would one attend an artistic performance in a park that is partially a construction site. Nonetheless, individuals flocked to the park on that chilly Friday night. The main attraction? The beautiful illuminated arch in the middle of the park.

I think it need not be explained why my group unanimously decided that the arch would be the focus (and meet up destination) of our conquest to find art in the Village. Heck, if architects didn’t know it would be such a huge attraction, they wouldn’t have invested God knows how much money to have the structure illuminated for the late night dwellers who happen to wander into the park. Which is another thing that I found interesting, unlike other parks, the sign for this park said it closes at 12am in comparison to 9pm. I guess that worked out well for the NYU theater students that we happened to come across rehearsing their play on worker’s rights in the middle of the park. Dressed for the part, they marched around in the 20th century attire and demanded less hours and more pay.

Not only does the park attract theater performers, but we also came across many photographers trying to capture the beauty of the arch. In fact, one of the photographers informed us that he even though he wasn’t from the area, he was in the park to photograph an event that was happening for Nike. This demonstrated not only the diverse forms of art and expression that occur in this iconic part of the Village, but the appeal of the park to non-locals.

As my group ventured out of the park and into the rest of the city, the presence of NYU seemed to be a very influential aspect of the neighborhood. The architecture of the dorms and many of the buildings had a very quaint appeal to them, and felt like they should belong in a vintage movie about a struggling artist. Continuing our quest to find art, we were, much to our surprise, permitted to enter the Tisch School of the Arts, where a lecture seemed to be held in a room just out of our reach. We did however, get to interview one student who had a very interesting take on art in the Village. When we asked him how he felt about the area, he declared that there isn’t much art left to be found outside of the school’s gallery.

He supported his claim by explaining how much of the local artists had been pushed out of the area by it’s increasing cost of living there, and all that remains is wealthy, privileged NYU students. To an extent, I agree with this student, although I find it ironic that he insult the “rich NYU kid” being that he most likely is one of them. While my group walked around the Village, it seemed more filled with pretentious college students, bustling about, and quite possibly looking for a party (hey, it was a Friday night after all). Although we did encounter various art forms in the park, and were informed of a local “curly haired” artist, I did not see much evidence of art outside of the school of art and Washington Square Park. I think the area does show remnants of a once predominantly artistic community, especially with it’s beautiful brownstones. However, other than that, I did not see any sculptures, murals, not even any graffiti. Maybe the lack of activity was due to the chilly weather, but I must agree with the student from the gallery and say that majority of art has been removed from the Village, and in its place are pretentious individuals longing to appear artistic (who must have AMAZING GPS systems on their phones).

After reading the assignment, Zohar, Ebrahim, Nicki and Sylvia (ZENS), were excited to get started…so excited we made a catchy/witty group name ^_^! Like my groupmates I was quite skeptical on whether or not we’d find any art in Lower East Side. I know the infamous Museum Mile but that’s Upper East Side! So after some research I was anxious to go on this quest and find a mime to guarantee my A+.  Alas, Lower East Side had no mimes. 🙁

Galleries. I think Lower East Side is infamous for these because as we were walking block after block we saw so many various galleries. Upon discovering these galleries I was ecstatic, thinking this assignment will be cake…unfortunately, they were all closed -_-. What was even more grrr inducing (frustrating in Ebrahim) is that all the security guards were camera shy and didn’t give us any worthwhile info.

Architecture. What I will say about Lower East Side is it has a lot of beautiful architecture. As we were walking around I saw unconventional (in the most awesome way) buildings and really awesome doorways. See Sylvia’s awesome blog post about the architectural magic in the Lower East Side

During our interviews I began to ask myself, what exactly constitutes as art? After all, I’m asking these total strangers where they’d go to find art and I don’t even know what I fully consider as art! Or do I? (dun dun dunnnn! *dramaticmusic*)

The best part of the quest was definitely going down to the Blue Man Group and talking to this fun-loving awesome dude. He told us that his favorite type of art in the Lower East Side is in fact the street art and performers you can find. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any street performers. However, I agree with him; if I was traveling to any community in the search for art, even though I’d definitely pop in some museums and galleries, my favorite type of art would be street art.

Holidays however, also allow individuals to express themselves in an artistic manner with wondrous decorations and Lower East Side was living proof of this (well technically Lower East Side can’t breathe nor would it be considered ‘living’ but you get what I mean). Halloween is of course notorious for its use of pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns. As we walked down blocks of homes we couldn’t help going crazy, crossing the street back and forth to take pictures of these creative pumpkins. Now you may think that cutting a pumpkin isn’t an art form but just look at these pictures!

PS. Keep an eye out for ZENS production of Inhabited, coming to Queens College this December.

… you accidentally enter the wrong bathroom. While in Chinatown, before my group and I were getting ready to watch a free performance, I needed to use the restroom and remember being confused about which bathroom to enter since both of the doors were wide open and you couldn’t see the front side of either door. I just randomly chose the door on the right and went in and saw nobody. When I come out, I see my group laughing hysterically and think, “What’s so funny?” Then I realize that a guy just came out of the bathroom on the other side – OOPS!! It’s not my fault I can’t read the Chinese words which were on top of the bathrooms which I saw afterwards.

Anyways, aside from this little anecdote, going to Chinatown in downtown Manhattan was in some ways familiar to me while in others, very different. When I think of Chinatown, what comes to mind first would have to be all the very cheap food restaurants and the street vendors. All this, I most definitely saw when I went to Chinatown but I also an artwork, a statue of Confucius which we decided to make our piece of artwork to focus on in Chinatown. We decided to make the statue of Confucius the piece of art we were going to focus on because Confucius is such a central figure in the lives of Chinese people because of all the principles he has set for Chinese people to follow. The statue of Confucius is art because it represents the cultural and moral values of a whole nation.

On our vast expeditions of Chinatown, Rui Yan happened to show us a place where we could enjoy live Chinese performance for free. Unfortunately, when we got to the performance, I didn’t really enjoy it at all. Even though I thought that the costumes for the performance were decent (I keep reminding myself that I need to get a pink suit), I just found the performance to be really boring. All I saw were two emotionless people on stage, who were just singing and nothing else. They didn’t seem engaged with the audience and I couldn’t understand a word they were saying because it was all in Chinese – maybe that’s why they call it “Chinatown”. Before the performance, when Rui Yan and Jodi asked to interview the director of the play, we were sadly turned down because she was busy preparing all the singers. Although we did not get to interview the director, we still did manage to fit in three interviews.

We saw two people just waiting on the corner of the street waiting for somebody so we went up to them and asked them for an interview. Like us, they were also relatively new to Chinatown and they didn’t seem to know too much about it but they did give us some information about the Confucius statue and Columbus Park. After hearing more about Columbus Park, it quickly became our next destination. From a couple blocks away from Columbus Park, we could already hear the wonderful tradition music being played. Without a doubt, Columbus Park is the most eventful place in Chinatown. Within, you would find many older Chinese people just sitting around and playing music which is where we found our next victim. Although our next interviewee was speaking in Chinese, I could tell that he was really knowledgeable about Chinatown and he has been there for a long time. He gave us some insight into his daily life, saying that Chinatown is his life and on a daily basis, he comes to Columbus Park with his little music group, playing their traditional Chinese instruments. After all this, we were all craving (especially me) for some dim-sum which I have always wanted to try so we went to a restaurant that Jodi had suggested. We luckily found a table right away, in which we found our next victims. When asked about the artwork in Chinatown, they were timid in their answers but when asked why do they even come to Chinatown, they had a more direct answer. They were primarily here for grocery shopping and for the very cheap food which I have to say was delicious.

All in all, Chinatown, is not really a place filled with tourist attractions and artwork, but a place filled with street vendors and restaurants. While looking at the statue of Confucius, I realized that we were really the only ones looking at the statue which made me believe that people don’t really come here for the art. In the end, I did come out with a enjoyable experience. I got the chance to listen to traditional Chinese music at Columbus Park, eat dim-sum for the first time in my life, and watch a live Chinese performance. Out of all this, there is most definitely one thing that I will remember the next time I go to Chinatown, always make sure to look above the bathroom and to read all the signs, whether it be in Chinese or English. Hopefully next time I won’t make the same mistake.