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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…

On Friday I went to the MET, and took a tour of their “highlights” with a curator, stopping at a few particularly interesting pieces in their collection. Here are some of them, and what makes them particularly interesting:

• In the Greek/Roman hall, the sculpture of fabric: while the greek sculptors portrayed the idealized human figure (even turning it into a mathematical formula) and the romans followed that tradition, fabric was the only part that was sculpted as it was, from thick to almost transparent, with embroidery, motifs, etc.
• In the African pavilion, a seated couple wood and metal figure: on the other hand, in Africa figures were never idealized; they served a purpose, wether it be funeral, deities, power, decoration… that’s why early 20th century european painters were so fond of African art.
• In gallery 528, Jean-Henri Riesener’s desk and cabinet: while the whole baroque room is interesting (the museum even hired a theatrical light expert to design a system that would show how the room would look in Paris according to the hour and season, considering is was lit by candles), those two pieces of furniture were exceptional (the desk for its mechanisms, and the cabinet for the original Japanese lacquer layer).
• Van Gogh’s La Berceuse: the only painting Van Gogh did sell in his lifetime. He was too ahead of his time to be accepted by the public, but positive reviews were being written soon before his death. One interesting thing he wrote to his brother in one of his many letters: “painting will become more music and less sculpture. The painting of the future will be all color”. He foresaw Rothko. Amazing.
• Rembrandt’s selft portrait: hearing his terrible life story (filled with death, sorrow, and the largest art collection by an artist, which he lost when he went bankrupt) while he stares at you into your eyes is moving. Particularly interesting: how he did not like symmetry at all, which (along with a powerful use of light) made his painting so strong and life-like.
•  The staircase from the Chicago Stock Exchange: the only exhibited piece at the MET that can be used… and stepped on!
• Tiffany’s Autum Landscape window in gallery 700: as the son of the famous jeweler, he traveled the “exotic world” (Morocco, India, etc) and brought color back with him to NY, working with glass in a way nobody has been able to reproduce today (he took his secret to the grave with him).
• The Temple of Dendur: a bright political move by Julius Caesar. It was a gift he made build for the Nubian king in his empire expansion. He even had himself depicted as a pharaoh offering gifts to deities, you can find him as the first figure facing the side entrance of the left of the Temple. The Temple, by the way, was discovered by some Americans in Egypt, being underwater. They decided to lift it above the water level to preserve it, and as a gratitude, the Egyptian government gave it to them as a gift.

But all of that was eclipsed by what was an awesome discovery for me:

In gallery 121, the fragment of A Queen’s Face (or as I call it: stone lips) is beautiful by itself. If you consider that is made out of yellow jasper, which can not be sculpted by metal tools (which means it had to be sculpted by stone tools) then it becomes remarkable. But the true significance of the piece (beyond the question of if it is Nefertiti, her mother-in-law, or whatever) lies in the period when it was created.

Akhenaten was a pharaoh that decided to reclaim power from the growing number of priests and gods, by declaring there was only one god (the Sun), and moving the capital. But he is also known for supporting the arts (which was obviously a propaganda and adoctrination method) and for asking the artist to depict things as they were, not as idealized figures (which is what had been done before). Sadly, after his death, Nefertiti (and later his son Tutankhamon) were not able to keep what Akhenaten had stablished, and the priests, gods, and classical idealized representation returned, leaving Akhenaten era’s art as a refreshing, unique, and advanced time in art history.

PS: On my way back to the subway, I used Instagram for the first (and probably last, since it nows belongs to Facebook) time, in order correct the very poor light sensitivity of my Andoid Phone’s camera, to capture a little Budha statue and flowers at the entrance of a nice building.

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…

Since I could not get a hold of tickts for New Museum’s Seven on Seven, I decided to make the most out of my day yesterday (defying my cold), so I even had time to visit the NYC anarchist book fair, at Judson Church (Washington Square).

I wish I had had more time to devote to exploring all the literature (great and aweful) on display. But at least I had time to notice:

• How little people attending knew about anarchy (imagine those outside)
• How deliciously ironic that it took place in what used to be a church
• How much anarchy is related to art (indeed, as a matter of fact, one of the books I purchased was NAASN‘s “Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies 2.2011″)

After j-CATION and having lunch at Mr. K’s (one of the best Chinese restaurants in Manhattan), yesterday I went to MoMA Film to see Gosfilmofond’s copy of the 1935 USSR film Loss of the Sensation (87 min.), directed by Aleksandr Andriyevsky.

Virtually unseen in the U.S., Andriyevsky’s liberal film version of Karel Capek’s popular 1920 play, R.U.R. (in which the notion of robots was introduced), the movie tells the story of Jim Ripple, an engineer, who invents robots controlled by saxophones and radio signals. As far as the capitalists are concerned, this is the “solution to the proletarian problem”, and they immediately hit on the idea of creating an army of emotionless fighting machines. Jim’s brother Jack is a workers’ leader and organises strikes against the robots, who will produce nothing but unemployment. After an accident when trying to bring them together, the humanoid machines are set on the strikers, but the workers fight back …

Although Marx’s “class struggle” mixed with Stalinist propaganda messages permeate much of the quite simplistic plot of the film, Jim Ripple’s character carries all the complexities and dilemmas that we are still wondering today in regards with technology, humanity, capitalism, production, power… An excellent film that makes you think.

Yesterday’s j-CATION (“Japan+Vacation”) festival at Japan Society was great fun: food (particularly delicious wagashi by Minamoto Kitchoan), live game-show (hosted by awesome Kenji America), workshops (shodo, block-stamping, origami, Japanese languaje basics, storytelling, games), movie, concert…