URBAN VELOCITY
It is his first day in the city, fresh out from JFK. His French accent, which he thought would fetch him free coffees and multiple dates with big breasted American women had only yielded him a roll of the eyes from the cute barista at the hipster coffee shop by his hotel, and unfriendly directions from a Frenchman who had obviously been living in the city too long. See him now at the YMCA. From his window, he can see a bit of Central Park in the distance. He tires real hard to summon adjectives. Majestic maybe, too clichÊ, grandiose, too French, he adored Manhattan, too Woody Allen, and he gives up for now. The truth is, to him it just looks like any other park from here. Later on meet Cecile, a sassy French girl he vaguely knows. He loves the dive bar and the bitterness of American beer but decides he hates her and her stupid friends, and solemnly swears never to see her again before remembering he doesn’t know anyone else in the city and that he might break that promise very soon. Jetlag soon settles in and he calls it an early night. He wakes up the next day at the sound of someone banging on his door, his dick in his hand, and a porn star loudly moaning on his computer screen. Shit.
ALEX CHEVAL
If you sit on the right side of the plane and the weather is good enough, you can see all of New York right after takeoff. First you can make out the streets of the Rockaways, then, as the plane goes up, the skyscrapers spiking out of the clouds. Soon it’s Long Island, and its long sandy beaches, and then the sea, nothing but the sea for seven hours, and then it’s back to Europe, one’s old problems, gray weather, andmore clement immigration rules for a French national. Quite the change. It’s been more than 5 years, and the memory of these two golden years in the city still feel like the best of times. He had a couple of girlfriends and jobs that pay the bills, but nothing was ever the same again. Falling into old habits is so easy back home. Drinking and smoking got worse, the making art stopped completely, the on and off depression, came back, the loneliness became hard to endure. He tried to come back, took his then second girlfriend Sophie on what was to be a two week trip in the best city ever. But there everything had changed and he found himself chasing after dead memories, dead places, dead people even. In this ghost town Sophie told him she believed in them and wanted to start something more serious, moving together, maybe one day a family together. He chuckled, walked out of the bar, and never saw her again.
SHABNAM MOALLEM + CINDY YEH
EXQUISITE CORPSE
a series of drawings made in the winter of February 2012 in Brooklyn. made within 10 minutes with 6-10 rotations between 2-3 players.
Theoric transportation Lines that follow none
Accidental Velocity- Sardina- 2014 Photo by Cindy Yeh
A Commentary Grief Forgotten in Urban Velocity After November 18th, everything seemed to move too fast. We had to rush home. We scrambled to call everyone and tell them the bad news. We hastily picked out a casket, flowers and prayers. I forced my fingers to fly over a keyboard, typing out a very very condensed history to be read at the wake. I remember when my high school best friend died, her parents took their time to arrange a funeral. They picked out all of her favorite songs, her favorite flowers. Her sister, who was amazing at piano, practiced songs to play. The ceremony felt personal.We couldn’t do that I guess. We had to get it over with and go back to living. That rush didn’t seem right. Unlike my late friend’s parents, I wasn’t given the time to make the “perfect funeral.” I wanted personal touches like wildflowers instead of 1-800-Flowers. But there wasn’t time to pick them. To help us out, the funeral home had these “funeral packages” labeled A, B, C, D, etc making the process of organizing a wake faster. We sat there looking at catalogue, mixing and matching coffins, floral arrangements, flower stands, rushing to get on with the next task. There was so much to do and no time to think. That week I realized the velocity of my life had changed dramatically. The pace quickened when I found out I was forced to go back to my accelerated graduate program. In New York City, the fastest city in the world no less. I was in no position to take off running at this new rate so I had to be dragged. Dragged onto a plane heading East, dragged from JFK to my Uptown apartment and dragged to class. When I got there, the velocity of life moved even faster. I could barely keep with school in New York City. I turned in the bare minimum. I wasn’t fast enough to chase down flighty boys in New York City. So I just let them go. Some of the friends in New York City couldn’t slow down. Or at least meet me in the middle. I convinced myself they just couldn’t hang.
A lot of times the stride of urban velocity caused me to crash. Wherever I fell–a bed, a couch, the sidewalk, a cab, pizza place booth–I tried to find the stillness experienced after a crash. Like when I fell off my motorcycle in college. I wasn’t necessarily calm, but I was finally stagnant and able to take in what just happened. I saw the long skinny third degree burn running down my leg and knew I was hurt. But I couldn’t do that here. I didn’t know where my wounds were or what I was wrong with me. There wasn’t time to process my injuries. New York City moved too quickly for that. I was left with two choices: get up or get run over. Survivalist instincts told me to get up. At first I was unsure why I was still moving. I think it was because even though the pace was hard to keep up with, the beauty of the city gave me moments to feel excited about life. I had moments within the rush where I couldn’t help but stop and notice the beauty. Like when the J train rises above the ground in Brooklyn. Looking up at the ceiling in Grand Central. Studying the graffiti in Bushwick. When you gaze over to admire the lights of Empire State. Walking through Central Park. It hurt to move but I at least I was moving. And moving helped me forgot. Forgetting isn’t good for processing but kept me from dwelling. It helped me finish school. Not my best work but it convinced the Ivy League to give me the degree. The forgetfulness I was blessed with allowed me to love New York like regular people could. In my ignorant bliss, I liked zooming through subway tunnels, speed walking through large crowds, over bridges and down narrow streets. Maybe forgetting gave me delusions of normalcy. This sounds unhealthy but maybe delusion is necessary to survive in times of darkness.
LARA MCCAFFERY
LLIIM I MITTSS
Me I never left. Came from the West Coast 40 years back and stayed ever since. My first day here I met my wife. I was at a bar with friends ordering something when this guy comes up to me and asks me if I’m single! I told him I was flattered but not interested, the guy laughs and tells me he wants to introduce me to his roommate. And BAM, there she was, you’ve seen the pictures, she was peuh-retty back in the days! Anyways I was ready to do anyone that night, but she wouldn’t let me. she played it smart and before I knew it, a few dates into it, I was stepping on my cock and madly in love with her. And then, you know, rent. We moved in together.
Sure, we went to Europe. But we didn’t like it too much. Everything’s slow over there. Not that I don’t wish things were slower here sometimes. People come and go and I lost a lot of good friends that couldn’t take it anymore. And what are you gonna do, you get lonely here sometimes.
CINDY YEH
YOU & I WE The user interface for a city is where I inputs the destination of where YOU is. I is the current location. I is a green dot & a blue dot & YOU is the red dot on the representation displayed on an LED-backlit screen. The blue dot moves away from the green dot denoting the current location, follows but wavers a blue pathway, stays static while moving through underground tunnels. I reaches YOU, passes YOU, goes back to YOU. I stays at YOU, makes projections, sends out messages for where WE will be. The blue dot moves away from the red dot, away from the blue path which leads to a green dot. YOU&I/WE, the blue dot. Snapshots of YOU&I/WE moving underneath LED lamps. I is at an interstice. The blue dot moves towards the green dot along the blue pathway, stays static in underground tunnels, is a green dot & a blue dot & YOU is elsewhere. Swipes downward to refresh the set of images.
ANTON HAUGEN
becoming becoming I CINDY YEH
A MODERN RUIN Welcome to Spreepark Plänterwald, an Amusement Park located in formally GDR- controlled East Berlin. It was opened in 1969 as the only entertainment park in East and West Berlin. Right next to the Spree, the main river which runs through all of Berlin, the park has been closed since 2002 . In 2004 the owner Norbert Witte was arrested for attempting to smuggle 180 kg of cocain from Peru to Germany in the masts of the Flying Carpet Ride, once a popular attraction of Spreepark Plänterwald. The park is still closed to the public, and only adventurers that sneak in can witness the beauty of the greenery taking over the park. The speed at which the rollercoasters once flew, have been replaced by the time of which this park has been left to decay and rot away as a relic of itself. A modern ruin.
THIS SPREAD IS DEDICATED TO THIS MAN: FRANCOIS VANDENDRIESSCHE THANK YOU FOR SHOWING US THE MOST AMAZING ABANDONED SPACES, LEADING US ON SOME SURREAL, CRAZY, ILLEGAL ADVENTURES AND ALL IN ALL BEING THE BEST GUIDE OF BERLIN. BESOS, CINDY YEH + FRANCOIS HUYGHE
TEXT: SHABNAM MOALLEM PHOTO: JACQUELINE FONTUGNE
PATHOLOGY
BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF PROSTATE CANCER
cells : urban in their tight packed living situation
an awkward velocity, in that the speed is usually high but the direction unwanted
connected symbiotic relationship with each other, like parts of a city
FROM EXQUISITE CORPSE SERIES- SHABNAM MOALLEM + CINDY YEH
CANDACE MING
Velocitas from the Latin Trying to move in a crowded room Trying to walk slower than normal A snail’s pace, a turtle creeps through the underground Unaware of the light shining out above Like a living organism a living cell Pulsating and gyrating to a rhythm To a rhyme
Vélocité from the French Say it in any way you can As fast as you can Trying to make up the words Trying so hard to keep up Trying so hard to keep straight In a place that’s all crooked.
I was the female Rastignac in my head. I’d read too many French novels as a kid, moved to New York with nothing but a suitcase and a few plays I’d written back home. My cousin know this guy that was playing off off Broadway plays and had told him over the phone I could crash on his couch for a few days until I found something more stable. He turned out to be a perv, looking at me through the keyhole while I showered, and even tried to grab my ass one night he came home really drunk. I didn’t care, sure I was pissed, bit it was part of the New York experience in my head, I was going to write my first play about what it’s like to be a young woman with ambition in a male-dominated art scene. Jake was my best friends then. I don’t know what I would have become without him. He held my arms when nobody was interested in my work, when I got evicted from my apartment, when I lost my daytime job. We had a good posse of art world kids, but I was never really close to them.
I guess I decided to leave after Jake’s death. Bicycle accident, 4 am, hit by a truck in a small Soho backstreet just minutes after we said goodbye. I’d put up with mediocre success, almost no money at all, no sentimental life to speak of, but that was the end for me. I left and never looked back. Fuck the suburbs though, a husband and kids, fuck that. I moved to a smaller town, and took up a creative job in an ad agency. I live comfortably and keep writing on the side, in my little notebook, and still dream of making it one day, someday, my play on Broadway, in New York.
SHABNAM MOALLEM
Timing an arrival right on the sunrise is difficult, and it’s still nighttime when the U-Haul van gets to thatcurve on the New Jersey turnpike where you can suddenly see all of the city. I will say this, it’s still a pretty fucking cool view, all the buildings lit up at night, the immensity of it, Gotham in all its greyness. Oh well, so much for the new day symbol he was looking for. Stephanie is still sleeping next to him, and he forgets to wake her up to see the view. She’s going to be so mad when she wakes up. Her first time here. The van pulls up on a industrial street of Brooklyn. Cody, barely awake, shows them the couch they can crash on in the living room and goes back snoring in his room. The place is tiny as shit and dirty, it’s ok, they don’t care, it’s exactly what they came for.
The day he leaves the city for good, it’s by bus. She kept most of the stuff they brought together five years before. Shitty job after shitty job, a relationship that never really got a new start in that new city, the drinking, and a sick mother at home, all together, a good enough reason to go back to Chicago. What he knows he’ll miss: the shows, the energy, how people never seem to look back. A couple of friends he met there, but he sucks at keeping in touch, so that’s that. Her of course.
The City will follow you In your blood All the pain and the joy All the streets become your veins The city makes you come alive
An eternal glimpse And a final kiss All at once This very moment The City will embrace you The City will leave you An ardent lover A husband Never.
– Berat Chavez
All eyes and ears Your soul craving Your heart open To be part of this A never ending love The turmoil and the madness Suffocating beauty You’ll submit willingly.
If you ever die A graceful death You will come back again.
Photo by Shabnam Moallem
Coloring Page ( Front Cover) By Cindy Yeh & Shabnam Moallem
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