Something out of Nothing

 --  By Tom Phillips 

Still from For a Dance Never Choreographed, 2021. Photo: Stefano Croci 

For artists and introverts, the Pandemic of 2020-22 was a window of opportunity -- a chance to observe the world in the absence of normal human activity.  During lockdown and quarantine periods, as we walked through deserted streets or sat in empty public spaces, we could suddenly see form without function --- the structure of civilization without its uses.   

Italian artist-choreographer Luca Veggetti found himself stuck in his hometown of Bologna, Italy, when the pandemic struck in 2020.  So he made something out of nothing.  

Veggetti’s film For a Dance Never Choreographed (2021) takes place in an empty plaza designed by Japanese architect Isamu Noguchi, with a text of notes by Martha Graham for a dance she never made.  The movement of the earth around the sun is represented by dark shadows creeping over the plaza, and the only human presence is the sound of voices crying, whispering, gasping and groaning --- expression minus words.  The whole impression is made by taking things away, removing the contents of  civilization and examining its substrate of earth and bricks, light and shade, desire and discontent. 

The 22-minute film is now permanently on view in the digital collection of the Noguchi Museum in New York.  To watch, click here and follow the link to the museum.  

Now--- shhhh. 

-- Copyright 2022 by Tom Phillips 

Viral Spring #9: Hoop Solitaire

-- By  Tom Phillips 

What do you miss most in this Viral Spring?  I asked that question at a recent social-distance gathering with three other people, and got four different answers.  Working, partying, going to church were three.  Mine was: Sports.

April is the coolest month, for both players and fans -- winter sports climaxing just as baseball returns. Pro basketball and hockey teams scramble for playoff spots. The outdoors warms, the boys of summer fly north, and the buzz of spring training becomes the roar of Opening Day.

Not this year.  Baseball, basketball, hockey are all stilled.  Tennis courts stretch empty in the parks.  Playgrounds are closed.  Here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the only sound of sporting life seems to emanate from a backyard on 111th street, where the thump of a basketball on concrete is followed by the clang of a shot off the rim. 

It's me, playing Hoop Solitaire.

I've been shooting balls through hoops for 70 years, starting in a suburban driveway on Long Island.  I hoped to be a star, but I had limited value to my high school and college teams, because the only skill I worked at was shooting.

My game is Hoop Solitaire.  And suddenly, it's the only game in town.

Viral Spring #3: Cuomo's Moment; Darkness on the Heights

-- By Tom Phillips
   

One by one, the lights are going out in Morningside Heights, as restaurants close, grocery stores and pharmacies limit the number of customers inside, and other businesses stay open, but with reduced hours and only to hand things off at the door.  For the first time ever, customers have to line up outside West Side Market... and live without the late-night luxury of Koronet Pizza.

Suddenly, we know several people sick with the coronavirus.  One is in a hospital in Brooklyn.  Her daughter is not allowed to visit.

Tom's Restaurant is closed for the duration. The Hungarian Pastry Shop went dark today.  Everyone with a second home or children in the countryside has left town.  A young couple in our building were packing their vacation gear and their big dog in a car Saturday, hoping to head for the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  The beaches there are closed, but you can't really close a beach, right?  I don't know, I said.  But driving with New York plates, you might get pulled over and quarantined. Rhode Island is already doing it.  Who knows where they'll crack down next?

The rest of America finally has a reason to persecute New Yorkers.  We may replace Asians in the role of chief scapegoats, reviled and spat on in the streets, or locked up until we prove ourselves healthy.  Only because Fox News is itself based in New York can we be confident that what they call the  "Chinese Coronavirus"won't turn into the "New York Coronavirus" on Fox TV.