jorge.cortell.net

Wednesday May 2nd, I had the pleasure to meet Fernando Sabater at Instituto Cervantes, NY.

The conversation was lighthearted and included many anecdotes and trvia, but also a good dose of Philosophy and Psychology wisdom and aphorisms (like those by Andrés Newman). Here are some delicious quotes by him:

• Don’t attack, don’t comply
• Childhood is always bad: wether because it was bad and left you a trauma, or because it was good and it frustrates you to leave it behind
• Happyness is also hard to bear
• Skepticism grows, and that’s why when I am about to make a statement (particularly if it is a grand one) I end up laughing. That’s why although I was going to become a great philoshoper, I ended up a simple professor
• The difficulty of leaving the pack
• I don’t have arguments to support good things… just try them!
• One phylosophizes in order not to stop asking questions
• Do not be shy on contradictions

And others quoted by him:

We live dramatically in a non-dramatic world

Santayana

Tell me the lie you consider more worthy of being true

Mon Faust (Paul Valéry)

If the young knew and the old could!

Old French proverb

Patent portas

Wrongly attributed by him to Epictetus (it is actually by Marcus Tullius Cicero)

Things are changing so much, I don’t even know if I’m on our side anymore

Anonymous quote after the Spanish Civil War

The difference between a civilized and a barbaric man is that the civilized man is willing to die for that in which he does not completely believes in

Isaiah Berlin

I know Paris “with Poe, in a dream”

Lovecraft (… but Poe had never been to Paris either!)

I propose to add to the Fundamental Bill of Rights: a right to contradict oneself, and a right to leave

Baudelaire

So, at the end of his talk, and since he had translated some of E. M. Cioran’s work and knew him personally, I asked him one question about the Romanian philosopher that has haunted me for decades: given his line of thought, why didn’t Cioran kill himself?

Sabater explained to me that he himself tried to be more of a nihilist and negativist in his early twenties, but Cioran told him: you do not look like a nihilist, with that body. And answering my question, Sabater told me how Cioran knew he could always kill himself, so he always left it for another day.

Yesterday I went to Japan Society for the Kota Yamazaki/Fluid hug-hug (glowing) dance.

I must admit, regardless of having read the description and program, that I did not understand anything at all. Not even after hearing Kota Yamazaki explain his work after the show. So, I did the only thing a reasonable person can do when approaching art and not understanding: feel.

While the apparent lack of linear narrative or character identification makes it hard to approach, the dancers movements (rather than the much touted but ineffective light design), unobtrusive (and minimal) sound landscape by Kohji Setoh, and the elegant twist with the hanging wooden props becoming physical space at the end, played together surprisingly well. Special mention to Ryoji Sasamoto’s incredibly elegant and fluid body movement. In another life I want to move like him.

After the show, I went and had dinner at Sakagura. The first time I went, I ended up dining in next door’s Soba Totto because I could not find Sakagura’s entrance: it is located inside the building, downstairs.

Nice space, but above all, great food. A wonderful end to a great evening.

On Friday, at lunch time, I went to the Guggenheim to meet Susan Thompson, Curatorial Assistant, for a tour of Francesca Woodman exhibition.

Although Francesca Woodman’s photographs are undeniably subtle and portray the mind of a troubled young woman (body, space, self, disgust, identity, etc), it is a pity she took her life so early, leaving us with what is obviously a truncated body of work, one that begins, explores, promises… but never concludes because death found her first.

What really annoyed me was the curator’s unwillingness (I refuse to believe she “did not have more information” as she said) to talk about Woodman’s suicide. So I asked her directly, and she still dodged the question. Why is suicide such a taboo, even today?

So, after taking the opportunity and seeing John Chamberlain choices exhibition (walking by Natalie Portman for the second time that day, as she took a walk with a friend, stroller and baby) and enjoying more than anticipated, in sharp contrast with the apathy the Being Singular Plural exhibition provoked upon exploration, I headed to the School of Visual Arts for their MFA Computer Art Open Studios.

In short: unorganized, uncreative… not worth it.

On Tuesday I went to New York University for a nice conversation in the Inside the Internet Garage series, with journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher (AllThingsDigital, Wall Street Journal, etc).

Besides the very interesting bio/background overview of them that the interviewer did, here are some quotes that caught my attention.

Walt Mossberg:

IT departments are the most regressive force in tech, blocking new tech adoption

The story goes that Larry Page asked Steve Jobs for advice, he said “Find the 5 things you do best, and focus on it”, which it’s what he’s doing

(Talking about Mark Zuckerberg) “you need some megalomania in order to execute your idea better than others”

Kara Swisher:

Sergei Brin has always been the goofy one, but Larry Page = Bill Gates. Walt Mossberg adds: … or like Thomas Jefferson

Q: Has Google lost its edge? Both answer: No.

After the event, I talked a bit with Mr. Mossberg (quite a character, very determined and smart). The funny/sad anecdote came when I told him: “I’ve been reading you for decades” and he replied: “You don’t look that old”. 2 decades and 1 year to be exact. I guess I’m old. My impression of Mrs. Swisher is someone very smart, direct, tough… but humane at the same time.

The beauty of the day? This glitter covered bike I saw walking by SoHo.

Last Saturday, given that the Anarchist Art Festival seemed a little weak, I decided to spend the day at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

First, a nice tour of “The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook” exhibition (Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, third floor) by Dr. Elizabeth Cronin, assistant curator of photography at MoMA and NYPL. This exhibition, covering the period from 1910 to today, offers a critical reassessment of photography’s role in the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements—with a special emphasis on the medium’s relation to Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Constructivism, New Objectivity, Conceptual, and Post-Conceptual art—and in the development of contemporary artistic practices.

Bringing together over 250 works from MoMA’s collection, the exhibition features major projects by Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Germaine Krull, Gerhard Rühm, Helen Levitt, Daido Moriyama, Robert Heinecken, Ed Ruscha, Martha Rosler, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, and Walid Raad, among others.

Then, lunch at The Modern restaurant (inside the museum). With a well deserved Michelin star (yet reasonable prices) this restaurant combines basics such as salads or even strong-odor pizza (re-named “Alsatian crust pie with munster cheese and porcini”, of course), with elaborate dishes (poached egg over sea urchin foam, lobster and yam). Definitely on to my list.

And after lunch, a great silent russian film (“A Kiss For Mary Pickford“) about celebrities, Hollywood, mass hysteria…

First read this post.

Then watch this South Park episode.

Now, if you are not going to cook something, get out of the kitchen (and at least start selling )

And you thought I was talking about Princess Leia?

source

After posting graphs and cold data (quite ilustrative, I believe), and the discussion it has generated (people, why don’t you use the “comment” instead all the other unstructured methods you are using?), please let me write a caveat about graphs and cold data.

In my high-tech gym, you have the option to have a lot of data collected, for your own, private and personal use. It seems like a great idea at first. For example, I can access via a secure web site real time stats of my workouts, such as the “fitness balance” (which shows my emphasis in weight lifting, and then swimming -some data greyed out for privacy purposes-):

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Not that fast.

The following graph (Workout Log) allows me to see how many times I have worked out. Since I tend to go to the gym everyday (but it is not always possible), an average of 4 times per week sounds reasonable, but what is that max. 8 times per week number? Why is there such a dip in mid February?

Data often needs to be contextualized, otherwise we might end up with the wrong conclussion (those 8 workouts per week happened to be visits to the gym to do a personal assesment and training routine design, added to my regular workouts; and the dip… just a long trip!).

But even worse things can happen:

In this case, an obviously strange abherration is showing in the graph. Somehting to be concerned about? Not at all: the scale of the axis make a slight variation (less than 1%, less than a pound) seem like a huge shift. And variables such as measurement thresholds, electronic glitches, etc must be taken into account when considering the validity and presentation of that data.

Let’s just keep in mind: however great quantification and visualization tools are (and I do like them a lot, and believe they can be very beneficial to the way we make decissions and understand the world and ourselves) they must be used with care. After all, this following map might show all the places I have traveled to… but it can not tell you about the experiences lived there…

Play with data, discover, learn the hard truth…

Government debt does not explain it all:

Unemployment is, indeed, quite inapelable:

And minimum wage:

So, perhaps, taking all those (and the last “devastating evidence” one) graphs into account, French and German governments have tricked, via manipulative markets and rating agencies, ignorant technocrat Spain’s PP government into cutting social spending (like education and health, which in turn becomes productivity, and minimum wage and job stability, which promotes spending and growth) so we go deeper into the hole, and they take advantage of our excellent engineers at a low rate, while speculating with debt and making sure Spain does not become a strong competitor…

Don’t they realise that with a monarchy that “shoots itself in the foot trying to hunt elephants and hiding corruption and scandalous ties”, a media that is so self complacent and ass kissing that feels more like brothels, politicians so entrenched in the corrupt game that with two degrees of separation you could not find an honest Spaniard anymore, a starch church mingling in public affairs, and a population so absorbed by soccer, celebrities and fear, they do not need to do that? Spaniards doom themselves! We always have, damn religious guilt, envy, fear, pride and inferiority complex!