Christina notes

Berlin bubble artshow is first step to flying city

Visitors can enter the soap-like bubbles and experience a sense of floating in a futuristic galaxy at Berlin’s contemporary art museum and former station, Hamburger Bahnhof.The “Cloud Cities” exhibition, which runs until January 15, aims to offer a utopian vision of architecture and to stimulate contemplation on space and the earth’s fragile ecology.Saraceno, 38, says he wants to bring people who can no longer see the stars due to light pollution to a better awareness of the way the earth is floating in a galaxy.”We are flying at the very moment, the question is: are you aware of it?” said Saraceno, who is something of a renaissance man bridging science and art in his works.”These bubbles are biospheres, like the earth which is flying around the sun at a very high speed.”The Argentine artist, who prefers to describe himself as a “citizen of planet earth,” studied architecture and art in Buenos Aires and Frankfurt, as well as completing a NASA space program in Silicon Valley.Ultimately he aims to create a flying city of his biosphere-bubbles, which he says would lift skywards as the sun heated up the interior and the air pressure changed within. He uses plants with no roots, as earth would weigh the bubbles down.”You feel like you are in another realm, like an astronaut,” said nine-year old museum visitor Jan Benno, excitedly bouncing around in one of the bubbles suspended above the ground. “Or like a fly caught in a spider’s web.”Saraceno has exhibited works worldwide including at the 2009 Venice Biennale but this is the first exhibition to show 20 of his bubbles in one go.INTERACTIVE SPIDER’S WEBSaraceno, who is wary of explaining his work too directly, wants museum-goers’ physical interaction with the artworks to stimulate their own imagination and thought processes.Twenty plastic bubbles of varying sizes, some covered with plants, are strung from a wire spider web sprawling within the massive Hamburger Bahnhof, which served as the terminus for trains from Hamburg in the 19th century.Saraceno has long been fascinated by the strength and flexibility of spider webs, creating giant webs for his Biennale show “Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web.”“Scientists and journalists try to explain the geometry of the universe as a three-dimensional spider web,” said Saraceno, who, with arachnologists, scanned Black Widow webs into a computer in order to conceive how to construct one himself.Steep, rickety ladders lead up to the two largest bubbles, with diameters of 7 and 12 meters. Inside, the exhibition appears from another, muted, perspective. It feels like a bouncy castle and when you move, the web of wires stretches.Saraceno says he wants to reflect on social and environmental interconnectedness: “By moving one, the whole system reverberates through space conveying a sense of responsibility.”He added: “By building a flying city, we may learn how to live better and more sustainably on a flying earth.”Visitors must carefully close flaps behind them on entering the bubbles to sustain an adequate level of air pressure. If one bubble deflates, it impacts the whole constellation. The plants, inside or covering the bubbles, are carefully kept humid.”It is a very delicate equilibrium when you are trying to build up an ecosystem,” he said. “You have to have the right temperature, the right amount of air.”FLOATING MUSEUM?Saraceno says he was exciting about using the space of the former station, built in neoclassical style in the mid 19th century. The station was turned into a traffic museum in the early 20th century, and finally into an art museum in 1996.”It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said 80-year old museum-goer Lorna Mattison, from Britain, gazing up at the bubbles. “And very Berlin: enterprising and forward-looking.”Saraceno, who caused some consternation among his architect colleagues when he said he wanted to create a floating city, says he is now working with engineers on a floating museum.While he likes Berlin, he also misses the sun of his native Argentina, and a floating museum would enable him to get above the city’s grey cloud-cover.”People talk about traveling exhibitions, but what if the museum itself was traveling?” asked Saraceno. “At the moment, it is just in my mind, but hopefully it will catalyze someday!”

Harrisburg, Pa. attorney defends bankruptcy filing

Harrisburg is one of a handful of municipalities that has flirted with bankruptcy in the wake of the Great Recession that devastated budgets in state and local communities. Some say it could become a touchstone for whether other cities will follow this path to extract concessions from creditors and others.In an interview with Reuters Insider on Thursday, Mark Schwartz, an attorney for the city council, said the Chapter 9 filing was “absolutely” legal, rejecting charges from the mayor and the surrounding county that the council did not have the authority to take such a step.The Pennsylvania capital’s crisis has been a year in the making. The city of about 50,000 is hampered by $300 million in debt incurred from an expensive revamp of its incinerator and is struggling to fund key city services.On Thursday, Charles Zwally, special council for Dauphin County, where Harrisburg is located, said the county is weighing its options.”We’re reviewing it now and we’re advising the county…We don’t believe that they are authorized to file,” he said.The barriers for municipalities to file bankruptcy are high. Less than half of U.S. states authorize a city or county to undertake such a move, and such cases have been dismissed in the past.In 1991, Bridgeport, Connecticut filed but the case was dismissed as the city could not prove it was unable to pay its debts.In a press conference Wednesday, Mayor Linda Thompson said she was “ashamed of the behavior” of the council, and said the 4-3 vote to authorize bankruptcy was not legal.Bond insurer Assured Guaranty also questioned the legality of the filing, which the Harrisburg City Council approved in a 4-3 vote late on Tuesday.Schwartz rejected that assessment.”I’ve had 40 years of involvement with respect to representing and dealing with elected bodies,” Schwartz said.”The council basically utilized that remedy, which was bankruptcy, and filed for it.”Thompson said Wednesday that the mayor and the city solicitor must sign off on all hiring of outside counsel and the city solicitor must approve all ordinances and resolutions considered by the council, which was not done in this case, she said.The county is one of the most high-profile cities to use Chapter 9 of the U.S. bankruptcy code, most notably invoked nearly 20 years ago by Orange County, California.There have been only 629 municipal bankruptcies under Chapter 9 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code since 1937, according to James Spiotto, a municipal bankruptcy expert at the law firm Chapman and Cutler.The move likely sets up a protracted legal battle between several entities, including the county, state, city and bondholders.Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has said the city would be better off if it agreed to a rescue plan under the state’s Act 47 program for distressed cities — which has seen Philadelphia and other cities through crises. His office opposes the bankruptcy.”The governor and the bond insurer and the creditors are all jostling for, they’re still pushing their lawsuits which basically should be stayed by this proceeding,” said Schwartz.”What they’re pushing for is, it’s all about who’s first in line. The creditors want to get paid before police and fire. And that’s just wrong.”At the root of Harrisburg’s troubles is a financing scheme used to fund a state-of-the-art revamp of its trash-burning plant that left the city deeply in debt.The incinerator is owned by the Harrisburg Authority, a separate municipal entity, but the city and the surrounding Dauphin County guarantee much of that debt.Last December, with Harrisburg facing the prospect of bond defaults, deep service cuts, or worse, Pennsylvania officials put the city under its so-called Act 47 law, which obliges faltering cities to implement plans to ward off Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy filings.In July, the Harrisburg City Council rejected a state-approved rescue plan, which called on the city to renegotiate labor deals, cut jobs, and sell or lease the city’s major assets — its parking garages and the incinerator. A month later, the council rejected a similar plan.

55 notes