Attempted Atonement.

Friday night I met up with Dustin, Jessica, and Aaron in what was my attempt to do penance for the deplorable fact that I missed the Gordon Matta-Clark show at the Whitney this summer. One thing about living in NYC is the logistical impossibility of attending the thousands of potentially valuable and enriching events around the city each week. Out of sheer exhaustion, it eventually becomes a game of chance.

The Center for Architecture showed three of Matta-Clark's short videos of the various site-specific installation projects he undertook in the 60's and 70's. Although the acoustics were horrendous due to the noise of floor fans compensating for the broken geothermal system at the Center, it was fun to watch the process-oriented Super 8 filming as Matta-Clark and cohorts sawed a house in half allowing a sliver of sunlight to reflect through the house to the ground opposite:


The next video reeled while they peeled apart the facade of another in a series of 9ths in preparation for demolition, creating a condition where the interior became completely exposed to the surrounding landscape in an almost eerily vulnerable architectural section. The final footage was a dalliance in the underbelly infrastructure of New York City; giant concrete pipes, dripping water, sewage aqueducts, and even fields of columbaria. Matta-Clark has been in my realm of knowledge maybe since high school, but I've never seen these videos, and sadly, I've never seen the drawings, montages, pieces of walls that were undoubtedly in the Whitney show. Friday night, I learned that there are just some things for which there isn't acceptable penance.