fort wall street

This is map made by the artist Lordy Rodriguez for the Get Lost show at the New Museum on the Bowery.  There is a description of the intent of the show below.  Have a look at the other maps here.

Rodriguez’s map shows Manhattan at some future date.  It is a clear and perhaps alarming view of a very different time.  The island, Central Park, the Hudson and East Rivers, Broadway, the world trade center and Brooklyn are all recognizable elements that tell us we are in Manhattan.  However there are changes which mark drift from the ideas and forms that make up the New York we know today.

just-do-it junkie

It has been a long time since the Middle Ages, but it still seems incredible how things have changed since then.  For example religious doctrine, everyone’s favorite topic.  In the following quotation from Tom Hodgkinson’s The Freedom Manifesto, we learn that the Christian church during the Middle Ages preached against work because to work is to rely on oneself instead of fully trusting in God.  Man, things have changed.  Puritan/evangelical bait and switch – accomplished with ease by shuffling and twisting the same basic script – and hey presto now work is god. 

 

We’ve been told religion is an opiate, and that entertainment is an opiate, that TV is an idiot box, that we are amusing ourselves to death.  The bright light of scrutiny has been for generations trained on religion and entertainment, and we’ve come to define them both as … ‘hobbies’, lesser pursuits or maybe follies.  And the strength of that scrutiny has allowed leisure and mystery’s stern corollary work, to remain unchallenged.  It’s time to swing the lamp around and see what else is lurking in the dark corners of the room.  As opiates, religion and entertainment don’t come close to the high that work gives in this just-do-it junkie culture. 

 

Here is the quotation from The Freedom Manifesto:

 

“It also helps to learn that today’s madmen were normal ones in medieval societies.  In the early days, Christianity had opposed careers.  ‘Christianity tended to condemn all forms of negotium, all secular activity; on the other hand, it encouraged a certain otium, an idleness which displayed confidence in Providence,’ writes medieval historian Jacques Le Goff in Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages.  Yea, verily, idlers are more godly than toilers.  Lazy men did not work because they trusted in God to bring them their daily bread.  The country was full of begging friars.  Unlike the Elizabethans and Tudors, the medievals were idle friendly.  The non-working mendicants played a vital role in society by offering people an outlet for their charity.  It was a paradise for idlers.”