Fear. It rolls across my chest as I visit the old section of the psychiatric ward, now covered in the bare vines of ivy. Fogged yellow windows, the remnants of unused medical equipment can be seen through the grated window panes, and the red brick building towers seven stories high into the darkening skies of winter. The barren vines wind their way across the face of a building that bespeaks of pain and anguish, the tall rusted gates with lamps adorning the tops keep onlookers at a safe distance and the inhabitants or inmates safely within. At the base of the building on the corner of 28th and 1st Avenue, pixalated murals of joyous cartoon figures (now barely visible) adorn the chipped walls. They deeply disturb me, seem far out of place. On the gate hangs a sign: “Intake and Vacancy Control Entrance”. It points to a darkened corridor with a rather large black man standing guard in a fur-lined winter jacket. He eyes me as I pass. I nod but he does nothing.
I continue walking down 1st Avenue and enter the side entrance on 28th street and approach the security guard holding my camera. “There are no pictures here,” he says. “You can’t take them here–you need to go over there.” He points to the other side of the street. I say okay and say, “I just have one question: is the psych ward still here?” I point up sweeping my hand over the image of the worn building. He tells me it has closed, tells me that it has moved. “To Rikers?” I ask. He says he doesn’t know and I move on and continue taking pictures from across the street and down 28th which is in the midst of renovation. I know that what he says is untrue, that what has actually happened is that the pysch ward was simply moved inside and that this building has now become a homeless shelter.
I feel I am chipping away at an emotional puzzle, slowly letting the environment inform me of its pasts and presents. There is an air of strict control matched with a realization that bad things have occurred here, things which over the Bellevue’s long history have leaked out to the press and city inspectors, much of which I am now just coming to read. I walk back towards the main entrance of the Bellevue and enter.
1st Avenue and East 27th Street: 6:00 PM, Main Lobby
Audio Clip: http://chirb.it/hfOGM2
Vacuous. Empty space abounds in the space where the modern wing has been grafted on to the original architecture of the Bellevue. Sweeping architecture, half circles sweep above me and slam into the old architecture of the original administration building of the Bellevue. The expanse of the space is grand, off-white columns jut downwards into the black, white and salmon marble. Light pink brick on the walls tinged with black. The roof is made of glass panels with beige, metal pole framing. The old exists fully encapsulated by the modern facade, a relic of time’s passed. Au Bon Pain cafe in the corner, heavy metal chairs, steel circular tables–there are six of them, each with three chairs and they sit off to the side, lonely in this great expanse of space. A policeman stands guard at the entrance to the old administration building and looks bored but vigilant. I ask him about the old psych ward next door, confirms that that was its initial purpose but that now it serves as a homeless shelter. “Where is the psych ward now?” I ask, feigning deference to his badge. “Here,” he states curtly, pointing up to the original Bellevue architecture behind him. I thank him and move on. He is busy and I am merely a spectator to this space of suffering.
I look up to the bright halogen lights that shoot across the poles lining the roof. It is as if I am in a museum, strategic lighting accentuating the modern architecture of steel and glass while framing the old Bellevue with a sense of controlled preservation. I walk over, order a coffee and strategically place myself at a table on the side, away from the open space. This is the place I will come to observe this particular space of the Bellevue.
Voices bounce off of the marble floors, reverberate in the hollows and seem lost, empty souls roaming the halls of empty space. I record the sounds of the marbled halls as people far and near discuss their work schedules, doctors, nurses and interns on their breaks. Invalids sweep into the main lobby from the cold and damp 1st Avenue limping, wearing the tattered clothing of better days unseen. Some seem crazy, talking to themselves in overzealous bouts of frustration. Others are merely quiet, perhaps subdued. Wheelchairs, canes, limps, pain, quiet voices. Signs on the glass lining each floor read in all capital letters “FLU” for no apparent reason. A banner on the old administration building underneath the oxidized green lanterns reads “Bellevue Goes Red for Health” and two white manikins wearing red dresses stand on either side. A marble bench in front has patient’s family members and friends sitting on the bench, seemingly unaware of the strange scene behind them.
This is an easy place to sit as a visitor. Interns sit next to me discussing their night shift which I gather is about to begin. Whether a patient awaiting admittance or friends or family members of those who have been admitted, this is a space of waiting. Not a space of joy or laughter, it is subdued, a space of suffering, a space interpolated between the known and the unknown, the past and the ever-enfolding present of architectural traces. I stand and walk down the hallways towards the Psychiatric Evaluation Services Building, building C2.
Moving from Main Lobby to Secondary Lobby on 27th Street, 6:30 PM
Catholic church, synagogue, prayer rooms for every religion imaginable just down the hall. People wait here for long periods of time, enough to need churches. I move down the hallway as a spectator of other people’s pain and joy. I am uncomfortable, feel as though I do not have a right to be here. This is a space where people come for comfort from their ailments and admittance is granted to only those that suffer. Suffering and the employment of lessening suffering is the connection to the building, the reason that people from all five boroughs of New York City and beyond make their way to the Bellevue Hospital. It is the reason people come here and the reason people stay. I work my way down the forest green hallways spotted with white tiles and come upon the secondary lobby on 27th street. Mentally, I am still mapping out the territory, learning the crooks and crannies and hidden recesses of the Bellevue.
Secondary Lobby on 27th Street, 6:30 PM
Audio Clip: http://chirb.it/0F1DJg
Another common sitting area, this one with darker tiles, gray stony pillars beige in color. The lighting is painfully florescent, the ceiling lower. Strange white bean pod seats adorn the ground with orange cushions. Sitting diagonally from one another, primary red flower pots with dead plants in them spot the floor and seem to fit nicely into their drab surroundings. People sit and talk in hushed tones, voices from the hallways echo against the marble floors. I cannot understand what they are saying nor can I locate them visually. Behind me, large rectangular windows framed with brown metal open out to a drop-off area and a primary blue parking garage not far off to the left.
“MRI”, “Parking”, “Pharmacy” signs line the hallways. I am nervous and anxious, as if a nurse or doctor is about to come out and give me the bad news about a non-existent relative that has been treated at the Bellevue. The air is tinged with stale food and another Au Bon Pain cafe, bright yellow in color, is over in the corner. I smile and find it comical that “pain” is the last word in the restaurant’s name, regardless of its obvious meaning in French. Police walkie-talkies can be heard but I see no policemen. Cell phones ring, the sound of a man rolling a garbage bin down the hallway comes closer but stops. He is a janitor and stops to talk to a woman that is lost, then continues. There is a humming in the background, the crinkling of paper bags. The sound of music is distant, people walk by talking, I am encapsulated in a cave of inaudible murmurs and stale air. My head hurts. The light is dim. I exit.
Questions that arise:
What does it mean for the Bellevue to be a space of suffering? What of joy, happiness, boredom? What else is felt within this space?
How does one unfold the history of a space through observation alone? What can be told about the nooks and crannies of the Bellevue? Can one extrapolate a history of the space from the mossy grooves of a worn brick wall? What do broken, yellowed windows and wrought iron gates say?
What does it mean to keep people’s stories out of this exploration? Can I tell the Bellevue’s story as a physical space without interviewing people and asking them how the space affects them? Is it appropriate to observe people and at times, place my readings of their emotions on them? What then happens to their agency and if it is lost, does that really matter?
This piece moves from the notion that physical spaces literally and figuratively frame the possibilities of particular emotions to be felt. Within this physical structure then, do people have the agency to feel the ways in which they want to feel or is the array of possible emotions drawn into the architecture of the building itself?
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47478409@N06/sets/72157623335347155/show/with/4367244613/
Fieldnotes No. 1 (2/10/10): Initial Sketch of Care, Control, and Vision: Medical Structures of Sentiment (Bellevue Hospital)
February 20, 2010
Note: These are fieldnotes from the Bellevue Hospital project I am currently involved in through which I am exploring the ways in which the physical spaces of the Bellevue carve out, allow for, produce, engender, transmit, perform, disallow, and inhibit particular affective states in those that enter it.
__________
I approach the space of Bellevue Hospital having never seen it. All I know of it is what I have heard from others that have spoken of relatives admitted involuntarily to the psychiatric ward within. I imagine a darkened space with winding corridors, the type of ward featured in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Kesey slumped in the corner high on peyote and wildly scratching away at his notepads. There are nurses in crisp, white uniforms in this image, most having severe features, most having the look of having given up a part of their humanity in an attempt to maintain sanity and keep distance between themselves and their patients. The doctors are apparitions in this imagining, existing only in the dimly-lit rooms where sturdy, worn machinery lies seemingly unused and a humming can be heard throughout the hallways, perhaps the occasional cry of a patient now-realizing where they have been placed resounds.
The history of the Bellevue, constructed in 1736, lies silent within the aged walls, travels through the rusted pipes, oxidized copper ornamentals and worn down tiles, and slams up against the newly-renovated modern wing which has been grafted onto the aged original buildings of the Bellevue. Within the old and new, there is a dormant history reenacted every day with a new face, new people performing the duties of the hospital, the duties of care and control. “What relationships have coursed through this physical building?” I think to myself. “What power structures between nurses and patients, doctors and nurses, families and the institution, and perhaps most importantly, between the patients and the building itself course through the aged organizational structures?”
I begin to think of the space of the cubicle that I have written previously about (see here), the affective states such a historical space engenders, produces, and performs and I mentally transpose this space on to one of the imagined holding cells for mental patients: four walls, bright white, well-lit from far overhead, the light hidden behind a steel mesh cage to avoid breakage, and a steel bed in the corner with well-pressed, white linen. This is only what I imagine as I have never been inside. To this project I bring such imaginings and I am cognizant of their presence but unaware of how they may inflect my research.
I wonder what it would mean to study a space with humans as the ornaments to the physical structure of the hospital. What it means to think of the emotional capabilities of us as human beings as directly informed, honed, and limited by the physical structures we exist within. I begin to wonder too if, when we remain for long periods of time within one physical structure, the organizational structure embeds itself within our facial expressions, rears its head though our views of life and the world around us, lingers under our fingernails, and importantly, informs what we deem to be emotionally available to feel.
Leading questions: what affective states does an organizational space such as Bellevue Hospital allow for, produce, engender, transmit, perform, disallow, and inhibit? What if we begin to imagine, as others have, the physical space as a living being, a ruin of past lives, emotions and experiences which hold traces of such things within its very walls, floors, facades, lighting, and fabric? Do human beings have agency when encapsulated within an organizational space or does their vision become limited not only by what the space allows us to see given the particular positioning of walls and lighting but also by what movement is allowed within the spaces of the hospital (i.e. If I want to walk down the hall, there are particular boundaries to that desire)?
Beginning approach: A reflexive study of three, three-hour sessions of observation per week from particular sites around and within Bellevue Hospital: the Southwest public gardens, the main public lobby and the public eating area. The structure of the Bellevue will be noted, historically researched, photographed, and drawn from the inside and out. Observations of the affective states the physical structure engenders within myself will be noted. Observations of other’s actions, visible emotions, and movements while visiting the hospital will be noted. All will remain anonymous. A feel for the place and people will be noted and an essence of the place will be allowed to percolate up through time spent observing.
Photos of the first trip to Bellevue (a grounding): http://www.flickr.com/photos/47478409@N06/sets/72157623412143184/detail/
Imag-ine
February 12, 2010
Roberto desires something fantastical, a drawing that will transport him elsewhere, a painting that will cause him to inwardly traverse the knotted realm of neural fibers and wooded pathways of his mind, perhaps a film that will insist upon furthering the edicts by which he currently lives his life by. He has none of these things, simply looks out the window to the snowy street below, one older man ambling through the carved-out pathways of soiled snow having been shoveled carelessly to the side. Worn and torn knit hat, gold-rimmed glasses, a cardigan pulled too tightly over his overbearing frame, and a scarf, just long enough to wrap itself around his neck once: Roberto sees these things from three stories up, wants more than the meaningless details of a person’s costume seen from afar. The man’s speed is carefully mediated, each step seemingly a debate between mind, foot and earth as to where to step, in what manner to lay foot to ground. Roberto notices his cane, the elongated mahogany fibers spotted with rings of oxidized copper, the curvature of the handle, the wood sliding seamlessly into the man’s furrowed palms.
Roberto thinks of the much-mediated distance between himself and this stranger. As if trapped within a bubble of solitude, it is from afar and encased behind a pane of glass that Roberto observes the world. The strangers he watches carousing the sidewalks are the peopled fancies of his mind, the creative whimsies of his non-personal existence. This is a safe distance, far from potential pain, far from unwanted conversations. It is a distance which, when destroyed, has the potential for utter disruption from the normalcy of life’s mechanical operations.
The man has walked ten steps by now, stops to rest and arches his back, his shaking palm placed gently along the grooves of his lower back. He looks up to the sky. The gulls fly by. One cries into the frigid air. The sun is warm against his body now, his back has settled. He begins to walk again.
“What distances must we forego to be admitted to the personal sanctuaries of another human’s life?” Roberto thinks to himself. He knows the well-mediated distance, the distance imposed through personal defenses. But he imagines two bodies and perhaps they are shaking hands. He thinks of the physical distance which still, even though embraced, exists between those two palms. The physical distance that cannot be closed, the space between the atoms which only lends itself to further inquiries of deeper spaces unbridged. Roberto takes these spaces or distances as metaphors for the representation of distanced existence, the glassy windows which from behind we view the world and ourselves.
The man has walked farther now but remains in sight. His steps are more steady, his placement of foot to ground more pronounced. The light filters through the clouds and worn tree branches casting shadows along his aged body. He knows this man no better than himself and like a dream, takes his representations of this man to be a vector of his own subconscious, his readings of the man’s existence that of a dream analyst catalyzing imagery for the meaning of the here and now, now past. Through the partitions of this window, Roberto views the apparitions of a world of people unknown.
Grander significance erupts from no where but the recesses of his muddled mind and fervent imagination and he awaits his next image.
Capsule Hotel: Kotoyo
February 9, 2010
**This should be read as a pairing with Capsule Hotel: Sumi and other Capsule Hotel entries
Kotoyo holds the mop firmly in her hand. “The animals,” she thinks to herself as she absorbs the semen-stained sheets, the used condoms, the empty poppers. With a gloved hand and a grimace, she removes the evidence, attempts to bring the capsule back to a sterile state which is what her job’s end-goal truly is: utter neutrality and sterility.
For years she had worked the cramped halls and washed out stalls of the Green Plaza Shinjuku, had watched as the elite businessmen and women that had missed their commuter trains out of the city were replaced by vacancies, then semi-vagrants, then the long-term residents who stayed for months on end because the rents were cheaper than regular apartments and occasionally the rich, white, teenage tourists that prowled the streets of Tokyo looking for an “authentic” Japanese experience. Kotoyo was the unknown constant in all of their lives, the woman that weaved in and out of their lived experiences, readying their living spaces for the next day. In essence, she was the keeper of time within the capsule hotel, making sure day in and day out that time, at least within the hotel, had not moved and that in a city besieged by entropy, the Green Plaza Shinjuku remained static.
She walks around the corner, sees a forlorn boy sitting on the edge of his cubicle. It is not the first time that she has seen someone with such a look nor will it be the last. Many young Japanese men and women have traveled from pristine and spacious landscapes beset by utter poverty in the hopes that here in Tokyo, life would be easier, that they could attain what they see on the television. Most found what this boy and others had found: a dirty, fast-paced metropolis that shoved its inhabitants into smaller and smaller spaces and charged them more and more money, a city that seemed utterly indifferent to the quality of life of its citizens. Kotoyo slaps the mop to the ground, begins to weave it though the crooks and crannies of the tiled floor below and watches the boy as he slumps to the ground and his knees nearly give way. He rolls off down the hallway, dirty towel in hand, to begin another day in the Tokyo grind.
Sounds erupt from inside the steely capsules. She had become accustomed to the coughs, the wheezing, the snorts and farts but hears a woman crying and this, she knows, she will never get used to. She mops harder, tries to drown the sound out with the scraping of the metal now worn through the dirtied fibers of the mop on the hallway tiles. She can hear it still, remembers when she was just a girl and had traveled up from Akitakata near Hiroshima after her mother had died of cancer and her father was in need of hospitalization. Her plan had been to come to Tokyo, find a job and send money back to her father’s brother who would give her father the necessary care to ease the pain of his prostate cancer. She had planned to do this within the month but things hadn’t gone according to plan. That month had turned into six and she barely had enough to buy food and shelter for herself, let alone send money back to her father. She had found the Green Plaza, had been able to rent one of the capsules for cheap if she worked there, and soon after quit her job selling clothing at a run-down department store to mop the halls clean of transient decay. It was a few months later that she received a letter informing her that her father had passed away. It was then that she had cried within the capsule, heard the reverberations of her pain along plastic corridors and cement partitions.
Kotoyo continues her daily routine, finishes mopping the corners of the hallways and pulls out the disinfectant spray. She walks calmly down the hallway, her rubber sneakers squeaking on the newly polished floors, reaches the communal sinks and with a sweeping left to right movement, coats the sinks with an even coat of cleanliness. She hears the bacteria whimpering, imagines them writhing with pain and she smiles faintly. This is the favorite moment of her job.
She thinks of the time that has passed, the different inhabitants that have marked the years. She has traversed the social standings of servant to caretaker, from the lowly worker under the careful watch of the wealthy business elite to the nice old lady that cleans people’s sheets to the tourists and long-term renters. She has become many things to many people and in so doing, has largely lost what it means to be anything to herself.
Toilet brush in hand now, she begins to scrub away the feces of yesterday hoping to attain once again that pristine, white ceramic bowl that brings her comfort, lathers her with ease. “One day soon,” she thinks to herself, “I will go home.”
Roving Hotel: Steven
February 2, 2010
**This should be read as a pairing with Roving Hotel: Alfonso
Steven’s b
ody aches from sitting all day. He had told his team leader time and time again that his chair was not ergonomically-correct and was going to cause long-term damage to his spine if it wasn’t changed. She had listened and the chair had been ordered but it wasn’t fast enough for him for he could feel his spine beginning to pinch at the tailbone.
He enters the station at World Trade Center. It’s 9:00 PM and Steven sees that the E train has just arrived. He runs, his cashmere coattails trailing behind him and his wingtips click on the dirty cement platform. Once in, it is a race to get a good seat. He sees a woman searching as well and swoops in to grab the seat before she can get there. She is displeased and to avoid her darkened glances he opens up a newspaper and pretends to read. She is made invisible.
The train is moving now. Steven places the paper in his bag, reaches up his well-manicured, white hand and runs his slender, soft fingers through his well-combed, blond hair that he has swept back and to the side not unlike his father used to. A strand of hair falls on the right side of his face and he gently takes it and weaves it back into place. With his left hand he loosens his silk tie, flips open the top button of his shirt. He is loose now, letting go and relaxing. Steven pulls his right leg up, places it squarely across his left knee. His hands are now folded on top of the other on his lap. He averts any gazes from the other passengers for the moment, stares out the subway window into the black and white flicker of the subway reel. West 4th Street stop. Students from NYU get on, most likely headed into the depths of Queens where the rent is affordable.
Comfortable now, he looks around. There are not many people in the subway car. He looks to his left and at the far end of the car he sees a man, probably in his late 40’s, unkempt and dirty, most likely homeless. Steven thinks he is a Mexican or Puerto Rican, one of the two but doesn’t see the difference. He didn’t smell anything before but now he is sensing a disgusting array of soiled sheets and urine. He reaches into his coat pocket, feels the soft fibers brushing against the hairs on the back of his hand and grabs his glasses, places them neatly on his nose and around his ears. Through frame-less spectacles he watches as the man curls himself tighter into a ball in his dirtied sleeping bag and plastic bags. “Like an animal,” Steven thinks to himself and is revolted yet fascinated to observe his epitome of laziness. He thinks to himself how nice it would be to sleep all day, beg for money from complete strangers, treat the subway as your personal hotel and never have to deal with a boss or responsibility. He doesn’t think he could handle not being able to bathe regularly.
42nd Street stop. An older Puerto Rican woman gets on, looks over at the man and shakes her head, moving clear down to the other side of the car. Steven has four more stops before he gets off. A police officer crosses cars while it is moving, the doors slide gracefully open and slam shut. The homeless man jumps but falls back asleep. Like a breath of fresh air, Steven welcomes the cop’s presence and the justice he will reign down upon this man. He pays $90 a month to ride the subway and sees no reason why he should have to smell this man or all the others like him that just use the cars for a place to sleep. The cop grabs his baton and nudges the man with it in the ribs. He starts but then falls back asleep. Steven thinks he is most likely drunk and swears he can smell some type of booze coming from his direction. The cop nudges him again, this time continually. “You need to wake up,” he tells him. “You can’t sleep in here.” The man wakes up and with tired eyes he looks up at him and agrees. “Collect your stuff and exit the car please,” he says and he obeys, wrapping his things back up in the plastic bags from whence they came, tying his sleeping bag into a manageable ball. The constant movement releases all the odors which were once before contained and Steven scowls, tries to stop breathing through his nose. The cop sits to the side, watching. The 7th Avenue stop is next. Steven shifts in his seat, his suit pants sliding across the subway benches, ice skating on a field of plastic. The homeless man stands, looks over and for a moment, locks eyes with Steven. Steven sees his tired, brown eyes, his ragged, dark beard, his hands that are toughened over with calluses and scars. He sees his hair, tousled and worn, his pants ripped, his shirt torn. The train stops, the man leaves and Steven breathes deep as the cop exits and his comfort level is restored. “Glad for the NYPD,” he thinks to himself and looks up to the stop map. Two more. He’s almost home.
Photo Courtesy of Downtown Express
Capsule Hotel: Sumi
February 1, 2010
**This should be read as a pairing with Capsule Hotel: Ebisu
Sumi wakes to find that the screen on the edge of her capsule has been lifted and a small white boy named Mark is looking in curiously. It was becoming a daily ritual for the boy, an exercise in naturalist tendencies and Sumi felt like a rhino on the plains of Kenya, the ones she saw on the small television screen above her bed. She yells ‘Dette!’ and kicks at the boy with her sore feet and aching legs. The boy scatters, looks on from a distance and disappears down the yellowed hallway. There is no use in trying to go back to bed she knows and moves her body forward down the cylinder enclosure towards the entrance where she will sit and listen to the crowded capsules birth their occupants into the morning air.
She had come from poverty, a house with poorly maintained infrastructure that blurred the lines between nature and clean, demarcated living space. Her father, Akio, was a farmer who grew rice in the terraces left untouched by the major agricultural companies that had taken over Japan. He still worked by hand, refused to use mechanization to increase productivity and as a result, produced little more than what was needed for their subsistence. Her mother, Cho, was a weaver and made mats and Fedoras out of the dried rice stalks which rarely sold but kept her occupied throughout most of Sumi’s childhood. Sumi had come to Tokyo with only a few yen in her pockets and an idealistic dream of becoming the next big Japanese pop star. Years later, she found herself working at a department store selling shoes and suits to well-groomed men and expensively-clad women and was disappointed only temporarily that she had not achieved her dream of stardom. She was proud to have a steady job, enough money to pay for a place to live even if it was pretty small and enough to eat and send some home to her ailing parents. It wasn’t much but her life in Tokyo was far better than it ever had been back home.
Sumi’s legs are dangling now over the edge and she looks to her left where the long-faced Ebisu is sitting, face ground into the tiled floor below. She never understood how he could be so depressed all the time. She knew his daily routine like the back of her hand. He would wake screaming often, sit dazed at the edge of his capsule, pouring over the dirty tiles on the floor and then would lean back temporarily watching some trashy television before he would get up and as if in a daze, walk down the hallways without looking anyone else in the eye. He was a strange character, one completely internal to himself and she often felt like reaching over to shake him from his waking reveries, letting him know that it wasn’t as bad as he made it out to be, that there were many positive aspects of their lives in Tokyo. Instead she watched him, day in and day out and was grateful that the vision of life that she had carved out for herself nourished her soul and allowed her to give freely to those around her. She watches as Ebisu jumps from the edge of the capsule, dirty towel in hand and slowly walks towards the communal baths. She feels sorry for him but has her own life to worry about.
Sumi slides her legs out completely, turns around and steps down to the floor below. It is cold against the soles of her feet and she arches them to keep them from touching as best she can. Others are waking now and she greets those that sit on the edges of their capsules with cheery and heartfelt sentiments. Like a ray of radiant sunshine she walks the hallways of clouded gazes and warped visions and bids sordid specters to return to their darkened recesses if only for her temporary presence. Sumi has begun another day and makes her way valiantly to the mossy communal baths of the capsule hotel.
