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Friday, June 09, 2006

Comments

GC

extremely interesting ... growing up in new york city, though a 'young' city by european standards, i often was amazed at how and why parkways, streets, stations, and whole neighborhoods flowed though identity as if adrift on the ocean. more often then not i found that there were benevolent, sinister, or more shockingly - ignorant forces at work. if one does not see scars on the body, how do you know that the past was real? well, thanks ... there is food for thought in your post.

claire

gc: we like to think, per orwell and 1984, that erasing the past is a sinister and totalitarian thing, but all political entities, all human groups, do it. and they do it blithely, ignorantly, and necessarily. actually preserving historical buildings, sites and ways is a very recent phenomenon. i think the people who built those historical buildings, sites and ways would be mostly appalled, or amused, to see us preserving them at the expense of modern conveniences.

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  • The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.
    -- George Orwell


    Geography and space are always gendered, always raced, always economical and always sexual. The textures that bind them together are daily re-written through a word, a gaze, a gesture.
    -- Irit Rogoff

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