DMZ

Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli's DMZ concerns a photojournalist who goes on assignment in Manhattan, otherwise known as the DMZ, during the second US civil war, a struggle between the United States of America and the Free States. Manhattan is the land between both armies, a no-go-out zone in which those who failed - or chose not - to vacate the island survive midst the bombing and political machinations of national conflict.

in fact, as a consequence of its in-between status, the DMZ, for all those who suffer sniper fire, is portrayed as a more likely place for an authentic community than either the United or Free States that surround it. the DMZ is beyond the pale but, it seems, none the worse for that. at the end of the second album the authors include a sort of guide book to the DMZ, an overview of places to eat, books to read and places to listen to music: 'Delancy's Kitchen: Delancey is an iffy street in terms of security, and that fucking subway entrance is right in front. Never queue up in front of this place if you can help it. If sniper's don't take shots at you from the bridge, the subway lunatics will. But this is one of the best places to see bands, so if you can get in safely, do it'.

the twenty pages that form the guide are, in many ways, a microcosm of the whole work, a distillation of its politics, its outlook and its aesthetic. not only do are we provided with a detailed portrayal of New York, with its eateries, immigrant diversity and monumental heritage, but we are provided with a vision of what that city would be in the midst of a divisive civil war. the key appears to be, however, that the DMZ itself is not particularly divided within itself. certainly there are suicide bombers and looters, but there is also a great deal of friendship, assistance and cosmopolitanism.

of course, one can't quite escape the sensation that Wood has tapped into a rather entrenched and long-lasting US tradition: the war to end all wars line. the work doesn't have any semblance of ultimate pacifism, but it does rely on the war as the instigator of the urban future. take Jamal's observation in his pop quiz that, speaking about his work restoring the walls along the Hudson River, 'This is the sort of work I dreamed about when I was young: designing and building something that'll make a real difference to my city. I wouldn't be doing this right now if the war hadn't happened, I bet'. The sentiment of Jamal's words are expressed by many of the characters in DMZ.

nevertheless, the urban world of the DMZ does indicate how the city of exception can quickly be transformed - or, indeed, is always co-existent with - the city in common, for the DMZ is as much a portrayal of everyday life as it is of life in the war zone.

in protest at large budget cuts proposed for public libraries in New York a publicity stunt was pulled to draw attention to the proposals: none other than the Ghostbusters. as some stunned, some wilfully oblivious and some amused library users of the New York Public Library watched, three ghosts sat themselves down amongst the readers only to be quickly driven out with the arrival of the Ghostbusters (no Bill Murray, sadly, but a remarkably good effort to recreate Harold Ramis).

like all public buildings, libraries fulfil a wide variety of functions: places to read, to write, to study, to congegrate, to pass the time, to take shelter, to pee, to sleep, to dream; they're also symbolic structures, places to engage with the nation and the state and, especially in this case, the city. but it also strikes me that the arrival of the ghostbusters says as much as about the power of the film world's imaginary as it does about New York. the city here becomes self-referential within the film world and those who could make the leap between ghosts and funding cuts (presumably that the reader's will become ghosts if the cuts aren't stopped) will be wondering who - in the non-film world - the ghostbuster saviours will be? perhaps there is some encouragement for the library users themselves and/or a call to arms to otherwordly academics: of the four ghostbusters three have PhDs and the last one (though this isn't mentioned in the film) was originally scripted as being the most educated of the bunch. perhaps I'm deluding myself. the New York Public Library does at least attempt to pull off an act of artistic politics.

but my final thought relates to dress: the classic ghost as sheet with two holes. as Belgium and France push for a full ban for the burqa, I wonder what consequences this has for the traditional ghost? or is the burqa to be ghosted from the West too?

thoughts on lost cities 1

among other things, Kevin Foster's Lost Worlds: Latin America and the Imagining of Empire highlights that when British writers write about Latin America they all so often write about lost cities. from Haggard's Heart of the World to Kingsley's Westward Ho!, from Waugh's A Handful of Dust to Shukman's The Lost City, the imagination appears to have moved on little from the sixteenth century. some questions:

does the Latin American lost city tell us anything about Latin America?

why are lost cities both lost and found, or sometimes lost only when found?

do lost cities have anything to do with cities at all?

can we find the lost city in the postmodern metropolis?

Pachacamac

a little way to the south of Lima in the Lurín Valley lie the ruins of Pachacamac, a site layered with pre-Colombian history. the ruins lay claim to Moche and Nazca as well as Huari and Inca heritage. the site is a fine reminder of the Peruvian desert, dust stretching along the coast and well inland, a far cry from the mountains and jungles. next to Pachacamac is a settlement: I wasn't close enough to make out much, except that it rose out of the dust abruptly. were it not for the armed guards who patrol Pachacamac, clambering over the areas other visitors are not allowed to tred, the proximity of the settlement to the ruins suggested almost that it was part of the ruins, an extension of Pachacamac. whilst I watched explosions were going off in the little settlement, celebratory reminders that people were living among the ruins, here tucked away on the edge of Lima, almost in defiance of the name given to the little town: Julio César Tello and Julio César Tello II. the guard was impassive, protecting what was already ruined.

Bar Sur

can Bar Sur be a 'bar notable'? on a personal note, Bar Sur can lay claim to notable status, since it was the only bar I didn't enter on the circuit and the only one photographed from the outside. why? because you can't enter the establishment without paying a cover charge to watch a tango show. thus, you're either forced into paying to watch from the balcony or paying to have a meal and watch from the ground floor. either way, it's a stiff price for a Quilmes.

how can 'bar notables', a supposedly historic set of drinking establishments, include places that either require you to eat (or, indeed, watch tango)? a bar is a drinking establishment, it is a place to gather, to read, to imbibe to your heart's content and not a place to be force fed.

but my angst at Bar Sur - expressed to a very patient waiter outside on the pavement - is merely a recognition that I want the 'bar notable' tag to be something it isn't. I want the history but I don't want the marketing. more than that, however, I discovered on further investigation that I was being naive. in the history section of the bar's website the founder, Ricardo Montesino, explains how he decided to create Bar Sur:

'por aquel entonces con un grupo de amigos soñábamos con hacer un club privado para congregar a más amigos..., recuerdo que le comenté a mi madre: "voy a poner un lugar al que va a venir a conocer gente de todas partes del mundo…", pensé en que ese lugar podría estar en San Telmo, porque me pareció el centro cívico… [...] Cuando vi esa esquina, construida en el año 1910, quedé encantado…, no sólo por su estilo arquitectónico, sino también, porque había que pegar la vuelta por la cortadita para llegar, lo cual le daba ese encanto especial que tiene lo escondido…, lo privado…, entonces invité a mis amigos y más tarde a mis hermanos a participar en el proyecto.'

['At the time a group of friends and myself dreamed of forming a private club where we could meet and include even more friends. I remember telling my mother. "I'm going to open a spot where people from all over the world will want to visit." I thought that place would be in San Telmo, as I believed it was a civic center... [...] Upon seeing that spot on the corner, built in 1910, I was awed not only by its architecture but by the shortcuts you had to take in order to reach it, a feature which gave it a special charm, a feeling of hiding and privacy. It was then that I invited friends and brothers to take part in the project.']

for all his talk of San Telmo as a civic centre, Montesino always wanted Bar Sur to be a private club on a private, tucked-away corner. standing on the pavement outside, I was in fact being confronted with the very history I'd thought was being denied me...

ruins in the city

on the edge of miraflores, lima, heading towards san isidro is the Huaca Pucllana, a group of pre-Colombian ruins sitting nearby modern blocks of flats and the houses and schools of the peruvian well-off. the site, dating from 200-500AD, was a ceremonial site and is comprised of adobe bricks joined with a mud cement.

Huaca Pucllana is a fine example of the precarious relationship between the city and ruins. on the one hand, the site is what the city is not. the dry and dusty area creates a desert within the city, its difference exaggerated by the railings that form the perimeter and which place the Huaca beyond the pale. the ruins, a place to venerate, to protect, to unearth brick by brick as the city around it is being built upon brick by brick, are excluded from the city. on the other, however, the Huaca is a reminder of what the city was, what it will become and, thus, what is already is: a ruin.

the city can never exclude ruination, can never push the ruin beyond its boundaries for it is constantly decaying, whether at the hands of earthquakes or the planner's wrecking ball.

caresses

under the slogan of offering caresses, a band of health workers, sex workers, researchers and artists, among others, have been campaigning in lima to protest violence against women.

using a variety of strategies, including a blog, videos, poster campaigns and even a comic strip, "se ofrecen caricias" is a carnavalesque protest, an archetypal example of the way in which politics in art has been transformed into artistic politics.

the mapping of prostitution is also included, a means of reconfiguring the urban orientation of lima, and similar to another example of alternative mapping relating to the disappeared of the last Argentine dictatorship. referring to health centres, identity card offices, areas of crackdowns on prostitutes and transvestites (Plaza Manco Capac) and areas where sex workers trade, the map transforms lima into a space that revolves around sex work. as a consequence, the historic centre of the city, plaza de armas, the square that made lima the city of kings, is absent, lying beyond where the city is drawn - beyond the pale...

bar notable

what makes a "bar notable" notable? is it history? myth? marketing? over the course of three weeks last buenos aires winter i undertook to visit every single "bar notable" in a city famed for its café culture.

el Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires awards official "bar notable" status to 54 establishments of varying price, location and historical value. the criteria is vague. owners and bar staff of the bars are clueless or don't want to let on. having "bar notable" status is not just a question of kudos and advertising, however, since the GCBA also contributes to the upkeep of the bars (as well as placing restrictions on modifications).

over the course of the three weeks the variety of bars (cafés?) made it increasingly difficult to appreciate precisely what they did have in common. some of them didn't even seem particularly notable. so were the bares notable a set of commonalities? or was it simply a case of the marketing of commonality as a strategy of obscuring difference?

el preferido de palermo

it seemed auspicious to begin a blog about latin american cities with a photograph of "el preferido de palermo". bar, canteen and grocery all in one - what better place to seek out commonality?

"el preferido", or so someone once told me and i've never thought to tell anyone anything else, was named so because it was borges' favourite hangout. except that borges lived across the way some 40 years before "el preferido" opened its doors. but no matter, because the myth is shared - just like the myth of borges. for a writer so preoccupied with the mythic re-fashionings of the urban past ("Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires") "el preferido" seems a suitable story.

beginning with a photograph emphasises the image of the city and its relationship to the urban imaginary. a reminder that we can seek the common in what is here and now and what is no longer. the photograph also forms part of a photographic series i took last summer in buenos aires - photographs taken in all the so-called "bares notables" as designated by the Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, of which more anon.