PotsdamerStrasse4

The Public Manoeuvering Strategic System is a podcast that encourages people to move around in public with an awareness of their bodies' individual and collective potentials. Each episode guides listeners through discrete visualization and physical exercises aimed at helping all types of bodies move confidently and safely through the public sphere (whether walking or using assistive devices). The series invites each listener to recognize their body's power to influence and even change the public sphere in which they move by acting alone or in accordance with others. The voice guiding listeners rests upon a minimalistic yet rhythmic track designed to support each individual’s various paces and movements without blocking out the sounds of their environment. 

This work is inspired by my own self-consciousness of my gait, posture, hidden disability, and body-in-general as I walk around; sit on busses, trains, and boats; get lost; sit on benches; and wander aimlessly. This project has also been developed via academic research on media and mobilization, including the work of Hans Magnus Ensenzberger, Italian free radio stations, such as Radio Alice, and the German radio collective LIGNA. It follows an overlooked tradition of broadcasting history that facilitates public movement and dance. Examples include Arthur Murray’s ‘radio dance’ in Atlanta, Georgia in 1920, a calisthenics program sponsored by New York’s Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in the mid-1920s, and Rajio Taiso, a daily Japanese calisthenics program and one of the world’s oldest radio shows, which began in 1928 to commemorate the coronation of Emperor Hirohito.

Ex. 1 - Public Manoeuvering Strategic System

Every year on Herman Melville’s birthday, the Mystic Seaport: Museum of America and the Sea holds a 24-hour marathon reading of Moby Dick. This year’s reading marked the 25th anniversary of this commemorative event. It took place on the upper deck of the last wooden whaling ship in the world, The Charles W. Morgan. WNSR’s Hethre Contant was there for the festivities.

from www.newschoolradio.org

FEATURE 24HrMobyDick

Hethre Contant visits the Pratt Institute to celebrate 2011 with a symphony of steam whistles.

Poetry from Word on the Street

Photo by Kaitlyn Tikkun

Old-Fashioned-New-Year

July 18, 2010–The Last Day that Artists in Union Square could Legally Sell their Work.

A district court judge recently denied an injunction regarding artists in public parks.  The injunction, had it passed, would have prevented The City of New York from enforcing a new rule the caps the number of artists able to set up tables and sell their work. Hethre Contant talked to artists in Union Square about the new rule, the injunction, and the role of “expressive matter” in Union Square.

The artists involved in this story (although not necessarily heard) are as follows:

Kristiana Pärn
Miriam West
Tom Bevan
Edie Pijpers
Marty Allen

Photo of Kay Merryweather by Hethre Contant

FEATURES Artists Union Sq Contant

Hawks are the most ferocious predator or pigeons!!!! 

BEWARE HAWKS OF UNION SQUARE!!!!

Baby-Hawk-1

Vox Pop Intro from the n+1 podcast with host Liz Hynes

n+1 podcast vox intro to Nikil Saval

Tipper-Moor-Creation-Stereo

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In the <a
href="http://library.nybg.org/">Mertz library</a> at the New York Botanical
Garden there are whistles&#8212;pigeon whistles, Chinese pigeon whistles to be
precise

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

<a
href="http://urt.parsons.edu/urt/research/record/622">(Box 1)</a>

Here I am going through the two
boxes…. Inside each box, the whistles, which are made out of pieces of bamboo
and gourd are arranged like Christmas tree ornaments.
Each has its own cubbyhole and is delicately protected by a nest tissue paper. 

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

<a
href="http://urt.parsons.edu/urt/research/record/623">(Box 2)</a> 
<![if !supportLineBreakNewLine]> 
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The Mertz library at the New York
Botanical Garden is comprised mostly of horticultural and botany resources:
books about flowers and seeds, annual reports about mushrooms. 

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

These whistles are an anomaly. They
made their way into the collection because they belonged to one Clarence
McKenzie Lewis &#8211; civil engineer, investment banker, and avid plant
collector. In 1922 he bought <a
href="http://www.passaiccountynj.org/parkshistorical/historical_attractions/skylandsmanor.htm">Skylands Manor</a> in Ringwood, New Jersey. It was here
that he designed his exquisite gardens with unique plants from the farthest
reaches of the globe. 

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

Lewis also was a board member of
the New York Botanical Garden. This is how his <a
href="http://library.nybg.org/finding_guide/archv/lewis_ppb.html">collections</a>&nbsp; of pigeon
whistles made its way into this library. 

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

The whistles, from what I can <a
href="http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5075594">gather</a>,
belonged to Lewis’s Mother-in-law, Mrs. Mary Churchill Ripley. She was an
Oriental studies scholar, who published the Oriental Rug Book in 1904. So it
would make sense that she’d also be in possession of these miniature Chinese
instruments, which are designed to be played on the
tails of flying pigeons.

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

Here’s a photo from Alexandra
Lockett and Ian English&#8212;<a
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pigeonproject/4964114196/">Project Pigeon</a>&#8212;of
pigeon whistles in use

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

As I look at these whistles, which
remind me of giant wooden bugs or small faces with round fat cheeks, I wonder
what would it sound like if they were <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lELAZANXTAw">played</a>? 

<a
href="http://urt.parsons.edu/urt/research/record/471">look</a>

What <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-GMd1LUE7s">sound</a> would they make if
I tied them to the underside tail feathers of flock a high
flying endurance pigeon? 

<a
href="http://urt.parsons.edu/urt/research/record/58">look</a>

What would they say as they flew in
circles here above the garden grounds? Or at Skyland
manor in the mid-1920’s outside of the 45 room Tudor revival designed by John
Russell Pope…. On a sunny spring day…

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

I’ll never know for sure what these
Chinese Pigeon Whistles sounded like because their frailty and preservation
status prohibits them from their acoustic potential. 

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

Siegfried Zielinski says his book <a
href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&amp;tid=10601">Deep
Time of the Media</a> that “when spaces for action become ever smaller for all
that is unwieldy or does not entirely fit in, that is unfamiliar and foreign,
then we must attempt to confront the possible with its own impossibilities,
thus rendering it more inspiring and worth experiencing” (Zielinski, 11). 

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

So, I must imagine. I must imagine
what these whistles sounded like, I must imagine that
they were even flown. 

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

It’s with this spirit of
imagination and curiosity that I invite you to imagine, not about these
whistles, but about the pigeons that made them sing&#8212;The pigeons that made
their voices audible. That delivered messages to people in a time when all
practical methods wouldn’t suffice. Pigeons that, now, are either pests or
pets, but once ruled the air.

<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>

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