Socrates Sculpture Park: #1 At Picking Up #2

Yesterday (Friday, September 27th, 2013) in a conscious effort to simultaneously re-evaluate my impression of  contemporary art, as well as to to do something not based on monetary motivation or goals, I visited Socrates Sculpture Park for the first time with my friend. It is on Vernon Boulevard in Astoria, Queens. Though I am not familiar with the neighborhood, it was about a 30-minute (smartphone-aided) walk from the N subway station Broadway stop.

Before I walked through the park, I used one of two port-a-potties I saw near the entrance, which looks like this:

I mention the port-a-potty because the crap-pickup advertisement I saw on the door, reading: We’re #1 at picking up #2, is one of the best pieces of art at the park. That’s right, it’s not presented as art, but considering a slab of concrete shaped like a dick or wilted radish is presented as art in this park, contemporary art appears to be based on a “gotta get ’em all” approach (comparable to collecting Pokemon cards). In other words, anything and everything goes, as long as there’s a trust-fund provided hipster living to fart out art theories so profound they don’t make sense.

I visited Socrates Sculpture Park in the late afternoon or early evening, around 4 PM. There were a few big dogs slobbering and sniffing each others’ asses and their hipster owners (all appearing to be white) likewise sniffing each others’ asses to get a feel for the depth of their bonding potential. The dogs were all off their leashes because obviously the owners possess the magical power to control their dogs’ every “thought” and move. Despite not liking dogs, I was treated to the risk of being bitten or otherwise mauled, if not simply bothered by one of their dogs, because their owners are as dumb, as well as inconsiderate as they look.

In terms of demographics, I only enjoyed the company of myself, my friend, a Southeast Asian woman who was wearing a sari with a very young relative, and a white and black cat with demonic and mean-looking, amber-yellow eyes. I also liked the clean-ish smell of the grass, trees, the view of Manhattan across the water.

Our entire walk through the park probably took about an hour, or an hour-and-a-half at most. The park is a little bit small, but considering that in 1986, the site was an “abandoned riverside landfill and illegal dumpsite,” according to the official Socrates Sculpture Park “Mission & History page itself, probably most people can enjoy just for the sake of not being inside of a shopping center or wedged between shopping centers. Even though I am not “enlightened” nor “profound” enough to be “stimulated” (what does this mean again?) intellectually or emotionally by most of the sculptures I saw at the park, it is likely way better than experiencing a smelly, unhygienic landfill and dumpsite.

I am not sure if I went to the park on an off-day or-time, but the demographics of the park visitors was the pits of the experience. A neighborhood park, regardless of having sculptures or not, should be publicized as a place where everyone in the neighborhood especially, and other visitors can enjoy the space. I am inclined to think many of the white hipsters I saw at the park consider themselves ten steps ahead of non-art fart plebeians in terms of thinking, and thereby pay lots of lip service to the merits of ethnic and racial diversity, but when it comes to non-Urban Outfitter-types actually participating in or visiting Socrates Sculpture Park or elsewhere, they appear turned off, or their true colors as shithead and dumbass elitists begin to shine.

I hope the next time I visit the park, I can enjoy it with a more diverse, less pretentious crowd. In the meantime, below are some of the current installations.

Wood, Weenie

Cement, Weenie

Soft Material, Weenie

Wood, Not a Weenie (I think)

Wood, Fortune Cookie Wisdom: RESIST ACCEPTING FATE

 One View of Manhattan from Socrates Sculpture Park

*All photos taken by me, unless otherwise noted.

7 Months of Living in China, 7 Months of Wishing I Lived in Hong Kong

Six months after leaving mainland China (henceforth “China”), I have decided to write briefly about one aspect—the frustration, of living in southern China for approximately seven months because I have decided to begin an online writing or journalistic portfolio. I want to transition into a career in print journalism, or journalism in general. I also cannot stand looking at a blank portfolio homepage anymore.

It is much easier for me to describe my experience in China through negative statements (i.e., China was not comparable to Hong Kong) and negative thinking in general. Since negativity is easier than positivity and currently I am also short on first-hand journalistic scoops, I am going to write a mild tirade against Chinese people’s worship of foreigners and those foreigners’ condescension towards Chinese people.

The most important pre-conception I had confirmed for me over and over again, in more than one (and yes, more than two) Chinese cities is most of the foreigners (especially white and male) are bums or one-step above bums in their native countries and travel to the “Far East” to make do with the only asset they have: white skin. The flip-side of that preconception is that many of the Chinese people I have encountered appear honored to even be in the presence of a white person, and for some reason, feel simultaneously empowered and trivialized through mere association with any white person.

At the same time, I often saw and experienced Chinese people behaving hostilely towards other Chinese, Asians mistaken as Chinese, visible Southeast Asians, dark-skinned people overall. Unabashed fawning is reserved by Chinese for white foreigners. This broad observation-statement doesn’t include every Chinese because I haven’t met every Chinese, nor does it include my Chinese friends (not Chinese-American friends, I don’t have any of those because I am neither Chinese nor foreign enough for fellow delicate ABC taste).

But, it includes most of the Chinese I met, especially in the mainland, and less often in Hong Kong and Macau, probably because residents of the special administrative regions have a longer history of contact with white foreigners in multi-national corporations, bars, English-language schools, casinos, and wherever else white, male foreigners go in China to show-off their most (only) admirable qualities and possessions:

1) White skin

2) Blue eyes, brown eyes, blonde hair, brown hair

3) Not in a vegetative state, or being alive or at least looking to be alive

To the naive, stupid, or smug white foreigner living in, has lived in, or visited China, as well as the foreigner who has not yet had the opportunity to experience China first-hand, my aforementioned description may seem like the angry farting of a physically- and mentally- twisted wench. While I may be a wench, the aforementioned description is extremely accurate in regards to the attitudes and behavior of Chinese towards the white foreigner.

As an undergraduate, I studied the modern history of China. Maybe as a result, whenever I saw a Chinese bark and snarl like a mad dog in the face of another Chinese or Asian person, but in the next instant, become a whimpering, shyly smiling dog in the face of the heaven-sent white foreigner, I felt that 63-64 years of Communist “revolutionizing” of China has basically resulted in the present race of 走狗 or running dogs. Regardless of the book-mined wisdom of academics, artists, and other fart-ologists disguised as Sinologists, I know the foremost problem of the Chinese race is the recently developed “instinct” to worship the select foreign (U.S.A, Europe) and to reject and shit on everything China-related. Chinese culture is not the problem. Communist Chinese culture and its disrespect for human life is the problem; Chinese treating fellow Chinese as fellow-second class citizens in China is the problem.

In addition to the obvious inferiority complex many Chinese have towards “Western”-looking foreigners, is the superiority complex many Westerners have towards Chinese. I do not doubt and I also am acquainted with a few Westerners (Americans) who travel, study, and/or work in China because they are sincerely interested in learning about, experiencing, and participating in the culture. However, throughout my time in China, I met only two Westerners (co-workers) who were and probably still are human. How do I know they are human and not in fact shit figurines masquerading as humans? Simply because they treated everyone I ever saw them interact with, like human beings, regardless of race.

Unfortunately, the other Westerners I met (and I met many not only in China, but Hong Kong and Macau as well) usually spent the majority of their time, outside of “teaching” English for USD$1,000 a month, making malicious, sarcastic, and lewd remarks about barbaric Chinese people and civilization. Occasionally, a self-styled “too cool for school” intellectual, recent college graduate would also drop an ostensibly witty observation about Chinese latrines or other some other East-West cultural difference, in between using Whatsapp or WeChat to solicit the next Chinese hostess, bar girl, bar frequenter (basically Western men & foreign visa hunters) for dinner and sex or drinks and sex. Or just sex.

The female Westerners (who are monolingual) I met often only opened their mouths to drink alcohol, smoke pot, or criticize Chinese university students’ English pronunciation or writing, or how backwardly conservative Chinese dating and sex culture is. The male Westerners simultaneously used their “Western” faces to have sex with any willing Chinese and Asian female (as well as females in general) while not-so-privately characterizing Chinese and Asian females as, more or less, vagina slot machines.

After a while of listening to, and just having to be around such people due to my previous work, I became sick and tired. Tomorrow if I read in The Shanghaiist or the South China Morning Post that one of the losers I had the misfortune of being acquainted with was found mauled by a group of Chinese mountain cats, I would breathe a sigh of relief. One less sack of foreign shit wasting space in China.

China for Chinese. China for people who respect Chinese. Who is better to enforce this than Chinese themselves?

*All photos taken by me, unless otherwise noted.