State of Emergency | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Haunting the Campus 2016

April 29, 2016 by Museum Fatigue

Yesterday morning at 8am students in our Pilgrims, Travelers and Tourists class spread out across campus, took empty spaces and narrated them into existence—haunting the campus with the likes of pirates, magical ravers, Paul Bunyan and revelations of improbable things just below the surface. The rainy weather wasn’t ideal, but the signs did attract a great deal of attention. Once again the sudden appearance of unknown narratives were a kind of collective campus curiosity test. “What are all of the yellow […]

Categories: Assignments, Pilgrims, Travelers, Tourists, Space, State of Emergency • Tags: classroom experience, Hamline University, Michel de Certeau

Zuccotti Park: Passive Recreation Only

October 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This past weekend, while in New York City I walked through Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of Occupy Wall Street. I couldn’t help but notice the new notice that was clearly much more recently installed than the earlier weathered notice beside it. Rather than the simple, familiar text of “No Skateboarding, Rollerblading, or Bicycling Allowed in the Park”—one that leaves all other activities open to public interpretation—the new text reads with the detailed care of a legal document. The notice clarifies […]

Categories: Space, State of Emergency, Urban • Tags: passive recreation, private space, public space, Saskia Sassen, Zuccotti Park

“Sing Red to Fight Darkness”: Chinese Urban Development as Apocalypse

July 23, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“Yes, people are constructed by their material world, but often they are not themselves the agents behind that material world through which they must live” (Miller 2009: 84). “The apocalyptic describes not just the spilling forth of the unseen, but also of the undifferentiated matter of the possible, of what could have been and was not, of what neither came to be nor what went away” (Williams 2011: 6). While in Dalian last month I found myself with a free […]

Categories: China, End of Times, Material Culture, Mythologies, Photo Essays, State of Emergency, Urban • Tags: apocalypse, Chinese Communist Party, corruption, 红色年代, Dalian, Daniel Miller, Evan Calder Williams, 钉子户, homes, Mao Zedong, nail houses, neighborhood, Omega Man, security, slogans, surveillance, tea, urban planning, 口号, 拆, 人情味

Demolishing Shanghai’s Old City, Spring 2006

December 12, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Before it can be nostalgically remembered as “Shanghai’s Old City” and before newly constructed “traditional buildings” can be experienced by both foreign and domestic tourists as authentic “Chinese culture”, historical structures must be cleared. This afternoon I came across a set of photos I shot in Shanghai in April 2006, which show just such a clearing. The photos were taken in part of the old Chinese city section of Shanghai in the period between the local residents’ departure and the […]

Categories: End of Times, Photo Essays, State of Emergency, Urban • Tags: China, old chinese city, Photography, Shanghai, 拆