viz. - Austin

Developing Austin for the Future

Jay Voss — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 04:24:00 +0000

(Image Credit: austinchronicle.com)

This is most likely my last post of the semester, and I thought I spend it writing about development trends in Austin. Anyone who has lived here for more than a few years should be keenly aware of just how quickly this city is changing. Even my landlord is complaining. Well, he’s not technically complaining, but as soon as he has a vacancy to fill, it’s taken, and I think part of the game has been lost for him. But I digress. One of the things about expansive growth in Austin is that it tends to not coincide with urban planning, as I noted in a previous post about the Texas Capital Building. This lack of planning can be frustrating to locals because, well…it’s not Paris. But there’s charm in the city’s architectural idiosyncrasies, and these things do give the city a sense of character. Austin’s a lot like the grimy sci-fi of the original Terminator film, especially when compared to the forensic cleanliness of Star Trek’s sci-fi. So, anyway, there’s a weird thing happening throughout Austin’s current growth spurt, in which planned communities are popping up in the middle of old non-planned neighborhoods. Two questions come to mind: Does it really matter that these communities are planned given the irregular historical zoning beauty that surrounds them? And, secondly, what’s the appeal of these antiseptic neighborhoods, when Austinites could have…well, Austin?

(Image Credit: www.buryinc.com)

Two of these neighborhoods immediately come to mind. “The Domain” shopping area, east of Mopac and north of 183, and “The Triangle,” which is located where Lamar and Guadalupe merge. Anyone reading this who frequents Austin’s hipper areas is probably rolling their eyes at this point – The Domain and The Triangle are not really places where people hang out (no offense). They’re places you go to if you want to visit Office Max or Louis Vuitton. (I didn’t even know how to spell “Vuitton” when I started writing this post.) In a nutshell, each of these planned neighborhoods offers retail space at street level, and apartments or condos above. Rhetorically, it’s quite obvious that these neighborhoods are trying to approximate the European high street. However, in my mind there are two very deep differences between what you find in Europe and what’s popping up in Austin. In most these European urban spaces it’s easy to walk out from where you live and purchase the necessities. In these new Austin neighborhoods, the idea is that you walk out from where you live and purchase luxuries. The second rather obvious difference is that in Austin, these planned urban spaces are suburban. They’re for away from the center of town. So once your mind breaks through the nictitating haze of superfluous consumption, it’s really quite hard to figure out what the appeal of living in these areas is.

(Image Credit: austintowers.net)

To be fair, housing is at such a premium in Austin at the moment, that you can’t really blame anyone for living anywhere. And I guess, really, Office Max and Louis Vitton – I mean “Vuitton” – wouldn’t be putting shops in these places if there weren’t consumers ready and waiting to pounce.

Small-Government Urban Planning Sometimes Negates Itself

Jay Voss — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 04:15:13 +0000

(Image Credit: dfwfoodtrucks.com)

There’s no doubting that Austin’s a great example of urban sprawl. Anyone who’s driven up Burnet Road on a shopping expedition, or down South Lamar looking for a romantic Saturday night dinner, has probably wondered at some point: Why can’t these things just be closer to where I live? Fortunately, I don’t think this question is born out of narcissism. Things are far apart in Austin. And given the town’s expanding population, they feel as though they’re getting farther and farther apart, with all the increased traffic and whatnot. Over the decades, this city has grown and expanded without any apparent civic regard for urban planning. Which makes the Capital Building a really interesting monument. The roads leading to the Texas State Capital are reminiscent of Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s planning of Washington, D.C., and they convey a confidence in American governance that would make Governor Rick Perry blush. Either that or the eyes of Texas are upon us.

The image at the top of this post always makes for a great drive when one’s headed north on Congress Avenue. It’s certainly a statement. As you progress, the Texas State Capital Building stairs you down with equal measures of confidence and invitation. There’s no obnoxious pride from this angle. There’s no celebration of the fact that the building is 33 feet taller than the United States Capital Building in Washington, D.C. Only Dostoevsky’s Underground Man could look at the way the Texas State Capital is set and feel spite or cynicism. It’s all absolutely gorgeous and inspiring, though I’m not really sure I can articulate precisely what it inspires. Maybe it’s meant to inspire a feeling of Texas pride, I don’t know. In any case, you certainly don’t need to have any Texas pride in order to appreciate the front of this building from a mile away due south. When viewed from the north, however, things start to get fuzzy.

(Image Credit: codinacrossamerica.com)

If you stand in front of the University of Texas tower and look south, it’ll appear that you’re also at the end of another avenue leading directly to the Texas State Capital. But you’re not. It’s all a brilliant illusion. The University of Texas is set at an angle to the state capital, but since all you can really see from campus is the rotunda, it appears as if the two institutions are square. Of course, it doesn’t really matter if the two buildings are in fact squared up with one another. Important governmental buildings across our country (and across the world, going back to the Roman forum) have never been flush. But deep down, I suspect that there’s some ancient human impulse that wants our important governing institutions to appear orderly and well thought-out.

(Image Credit: Google Maps)

It’s the best political ad in history: the democratic forum that appears orderly within and without. Can we take pleasure in these proportions and still be good citizens? I don’t know. The Texas State Capital, after all, isn’t the tallest building in Austin when viewed from far away.

Casino's Law: Defending American Liberties in Personal Injury Attorney Advertisements

Rachel Schneider — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 22:37:01 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot from Vimeo

The Super Bowl, with an audience of 111.5 million people, tends to be a place where the definition of “American” is equally invoked and contested. Not only do the hard hits and pick-sixes play out America’s strength, but also the commercials display American ingenuity and self-expression. After all, what could be more American than Bob Dylan in a Chrysler commercial, a cowboy driving a Chevy Silverado, a multilingual performance of “America the Beautiful” over a bottle of coke? At this year’s Super Bowl, only a personal injury attorney ad could top these greats.

The epic spectacle of Jamie Casino’s advertisement for his Savannah-based Casino Law Group not only invokes an All-American superhero origin myths but also adheres remarkably well to the personal injury attorney ad genre. Considering all the ad’s buzz, what makes this one so great? What makes attorney ads so arresting?

For one, it uses visual and verbal rhetorics of the action flick to portray Jamie Casino as a superhero fighting the villains:

H/T: Deadspin

There’s so much about this commercial that belongs to the Hollywood revenge flick: the “based on a true story” disclosure, the horrific tragedy of his brother’s death, the injustice of the crooked police, and the graveside scenes. The throbbing metal beat comes in at the turning point: “At some point, a man must ask why God created him.” The transition from clean-shaven lawyer to bearded badass who wields the sledgehammer labeled for his brother “Michael” against a shadowy, fiery background, slamming apart the gravestone, plays out in the lyrics as well as the visuals: “When you fall down on your knees / Beg for mercy: ‘mister, please—’ / The time has come to make things right / There ain’t no judge for pleadin’ to / We done convicted you / The Devil gets your soul tonight.” This ad perfectly fits its Super Bowl time slot: it’s as over-the-top as Joe Namath’s fur coat, as high drama as the safety the Seahawks scored in the game’s first play, and focuses on an all-American warrior who “speak[s] for innocent victims who cannot speak for themselves.”

Image Credit: Screenshot from Vimeo

I wasn’t surprised to learn from interviews with Casino himself and the commercial’s editor that they intentionally used a cinematic narrative style to draw the audience in. As Stephen Withers, the commercial’s editor put it:

He had a pretty solid idea of what he wanted. He used his storyboards to set up the edits the way he wanted. It was really like an ‘80s action movie, Terminator kind of feel when he brought it in, and he wanted to get away from that. Plus, we had to reconcile this gunslinger image from his previous ads with this family man idea.

Watching his previous commercial, it’s clear that the sledgehammer/song are used to help construct that continuity. The narrative also works for his commercial purposes: to engage his local audiences to trust him for legal services. If you want your attorney to be as a justice-seeking warrior, this commercial locates those traits within familiar action-flick imagery. Taking on the personae of the “gunslinger” and the vigilante makes for good drama: but how is this credible in a lawyer?

Image Credit: Screenshot from Vimeo

There’s a reason the commercial is so over-the-top: it seems to be part of the attorney ad genre, especially as covered by blogs like Above the Law. Breaking Bad’s sleazy lawyer Sal Goodman has similarly dramatic commercials, featuring the character in front of a Constitution-filled background invoking the tagline “Better Call Saul!”:

Locally here in Austin, we have several equally colorful attorneys who seem to take the city’s unofficial “Keep It Weird” logo as part of their ethos. One such attorney, David Komie of Komie & Morrow, has billboards around Austin that celebrate the fact that he is “the attorney that rocks.”

Image Credit: Austin Chronicle

His dreadlocked visage and leather jacket here perform a rock-and-roll image to appeal to the residents of the Live Music Capital of the World; even though the banner on his firm’s website puts him in a more traditional blue button-up, his biography mentions the name of his band. As Austin sketch comedy group Hustle Show puts it,

At least as far as the ads are concerned, David Komie combines two fun archetypes: the “Better call Saul!”-style billboard lawyer, who’s just trying to make his name and number more memorable than the next guy, and the middle-aged Austin rocker dude who has a square day job but, because it's Austin, wants to let you know that after he punches that clock, things are going get a little crazy.

Another local attorney, Adam Reposa, uses a more traditionally Texan image for his commercials:

The self-proclaimed DWI Badass here relies on a fabulous biker mustache, black cowboy hat, and gruff demeanor to convey that not only is he a lawyer, but one to be feared when you try and stop Americans from enjoying their freedoms. Here, he drives a monstrously large truck and repeatedly slams it into the smaller economy car, to emblematize his approach to the legal system. It’s not a little scary and, as my attorney friend informed me, against the rules of the State Bar of Texas to advertise in such an undignified fashion. (Perhaps it's no accident that Reposa has been held in contempt of court for lewd handgestures.)

Image Credit: Vice Magazine

Why are videos/images like these so prevalent within the genre? Perhaps it’s just to attract Hollywood deals and reality show producers. But not all of these characters actually become entertainment characters. In part, these videos get made because they draw attention, they work. There seems to me to be a classist angle to this: if you’re not familiar with the legal system or without financial means, you’re likely to find out about attorneys through popular media. You might be suspicious of a lawyer with “decorum,” because you want an attorney who can identify with your experiences and needs. If you have access to money or are of a certain class, you want a “tasteful” lawyer, the kind you might find in a biglaw firm who doesn’t need to advertise for business. If you find yourself mocking Jamie Casino, perhaps it’s a sign you don’t actually need legal representation. If you have been injured by your interactions with a corporate entity, you probably do want a legal superhero to save you.

In that case: rock on, David Komie. Rock on.

Can We Measure the Expansion of a City by Its Landscaping?

Jay Voss — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 22:03:01 +0000

(Image Credit: KXAN Austin)

It’s great to be back on viz. after a semester away. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the most noticeable thing in Austin upon my return is the city’s insane rate of expansion. When one moves about town and looks at buildings, every few blocks or so there’s a new set of high rise apartments (or whatever) going in. Nowhere are the roads being widened to account for the new residents. Rush hour is literally a bunch of metallic, CO2-emitting rivers, and all this negates (at least for me) most pretences Austin makes towards modernity. I heard somewhere that 20,000 people are moving to Austin each month, although I have no idea if that’s really the case – the statistic can make one feel like they live cattle market. But to be fair, most up-and-coming cities can have that feel. Traffic rant aside, if Austin’s powers at be aren’t adjusting roadways to account for new residents, I wonder how smaller entities (such as neighborhoods, private residents, and institutions) are altering their own urban environments to account for the change. In some cases, perhaps, maybe a few brilliant environments that were designed 20 years ago are still healthy, despite all the change. In other cases, perhaps the city is designing new parks and gardens to address future public needs. I am going to try and dedicate all my viz. posts for the coming semester to landscape design in Austin. It might prove valuable, as I’m not sure these things are being catalogued anywhere else.

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

First, a bit of landscape design history is in order. This will give my future descriptions of Austin some context, while also help us to gauge the quality of what’s being done around town. Humans have, in some way or another, been reshaping their surrounding natural environments for a very long time. Theories abound about whether or not Native Americans employed fire to clear prairie and alter forest growth. There is archeological record for controlled burnings in many areas inhabited by Native Americans, and academics debate about whether these fires were created by man or lightening. More concretely, there is amazing evidence of conscious human alteration on Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean, where the cryptic moai statues dot the landscape. I say “cryptic” because it’s commonly agreed that the creation of the statues on the island lead to rapid and complete deforestation – a very big transformation for inhabitants of a remote island. Every single last tree on Easter Island was cut down by the Rapa Nui people and used, it is believed, to help transport new moai statues all over the island. In each of these brief examples, it’s rather obvious that landscaping practices in these locations are cultural emanations of the native populations. The Native American clearings, if they were indeed caused by humans and not lightening, might have had some practical application. If not, they were most surely part of some spiritual event. As far as Easter Island is concerned, the Rapa Nui peoples went to great lengths to dot their island with moai statues, both transforming the landscape by the statues’ addition and the trees’ rapid removal. Current anthropology holds that the moai statues were symbols of authority and power.

(Image Credit: gardensinitaly.net)

In the European tradition, pretty much all landscape design is either an elaboration or refutation of Aristotle’s thinking. Aristotle’s view of the natural world was basically that cognitive intelligence was the zenith of biological development. As such, plants were on the bottom of things and humans were on top. In the Renaissance therefore, when Classical thinking was once again in fashion, wealthy Europeans influenced by Aristotle sought to make natural environments “more beautiful” than they were naturally. This was done by subjecting groupings of plants to fit within the boundaries of planned order and proportion. So between 1550 and 1600 (sometimes referred to as the “Golden Age of gardening”) there was a massive explosion of landscape design in wealthy Italy, all of it built by cardinals vying for the papacy. We are all familiar with the white smoke bit whenever a pope dies, and how the College of Cardinals gets together to elect a successor. These days much of the rhetoric that surrounds that election has to do with spirituality and the like, but in Renaissance Italy, the cardinals tended to elect those who were most influential, wealthy, and cultured. One of the most reliable ways the college could measure the extent of these attributes in perspective candidates was through their gardens. Gardens in Renaissance Italy, after all, were one went to be seen and admired, and the wealthy owners of these gardens took delight in having others want to be in their garden. And so through all of this you get gardens such as those at Villa Farnese just north of Rome, pictured above.

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

France subsequently experienced its own amazing period of garden design in the seventeenth century, when wealthy French aristocrats wanted to display their own personal wealth and culture in the fashionable ways of Renaissance Italy. Amongst a number of architects and gardeners who were designing new landscapes in seventeenth-century France, the most important was a man named André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre, for example, had the brilliant idea to align western Paris along the Champs de Elysee, a novelty that almost every visitor to Paris appreciates, even if they know nothing of architectural history. Above you can see a seventeenth-century engraving for the gardens at Château de Chantilly, one of Le Nôtre’s later projects. The English would take all this one step further, and design gardens meant to seem as if they were completely natural emanations. Of course they weren’t “natural” – they were carefully contemplated series of plantings. But, they reflected an emerging aesthetic sense that privileged inspiration from nature over inspiration from proportion and rationality. Below you can find a photograph of the garden at Rousham, designed by William Kent in the mid-eighteenth century. It is, perhaps, the most successful eighteenth-century English landscape garden.

(Image Credit: rousham.org)

I’m already nearly 500 words over my target length. In closing, then, I’ll end by saying that over the coming semester, I will attempt consider landscapes throughout Austin through the full lens of landscape design history. Some will conform, others no doubt won’t, and I’ll consider the implications of all these variations. At the fore will be a preoccupation with the extent to which horticultural work in and around the city makes rhetoric gestures, and the extent to which those gestures are conscious of Austin’s ongoing transformation.

Graffiti that Annotates (Where_do_we_grow_from_here.jpg)

Jenn Shapland — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:58:00 +0000

This image was uploaded with the post Graffiti that Annotates.

Graffiti that Annotates (Dont_open_dead_inside.jpg)

Jenn Shapland — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:58:00 +0000

This image was uploaded with the post Graffiti that Annotates.

Graffiti that Annotates (Cat_piss.jpg)

Jenn Shapland — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:55:00 +0000

This image was uploaded with the post Graffiti that Annotates.

Graffiti that Annotates

Jenn Shapland — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 14:55:39 +0000

My favorite genre of graffiti is work that comments on its immediate surroundings. In east Austin, this type of graffiti tends to refer to the seemingly unending gentrification of neighborhoods further and further out. Remember the fancy convenience stores I mentioned last time? Ones where you can buy $6 ice cream sandwiches? The image above is a defunct gas station that appears to have been purchased recently, so I think we can all imagine what's coming next. This graffiti artist—in their own, special, nostalgia-soaked way—wants to encourage visitors to the area to be critical of this expansion. See also: the time Hillside Farmacy's sign was edited to read "Hipster Farmacy."

As effective and important as it is to point out the community-destroying tendencies of new developments, it can get a little old: it's certainly a lament we hear often enough in this town. So I'm also drawn to graffiti that points out something unexpected or unnoticed in its particular locale. Take, for example, the gem above from the alley at 21st and Guad. I pass by this most days, and it makes me laugh pretty much every time. It refers to something a) palpable, b) not usually mentioned, c) gross, and d) ubiquitous in this central Texas roaming feline-palooza. It's also a comment on the ephemerality and dynamic quality of urban environments that graffiti is conscious of and participates in. Of course, like most things, it could also refer to a strain of weed. But I say the arrow suggests otherwise.

Image courtesy of Rhiannon Goad

Here, finally, is an image that appeared on my Instagram feed last week. It's another version of annotative graffiti, but one with a bit more depth than "Cat piss." "Dont open / dead inside" is cryptic, poetic, and kind of hilarious. It's also (as a friend had to point out to me) taken from The Walking Dead, which makes it all the more referential, but slightly less creative.

Graffiti as Advertisement

Jenn Shapland — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Photo credit: Flickr user elizaO

It’s nice to think about graffiti as a free, democratic art form. Anyone can participate—all you risk is a fine or possibly jail time! But in Austin, lately, graffiti has been taken over by the big green capitalist monster (a monster, some might say, who’s slowly but surely encroaching on the town with heinous condos and hip, remodeled convenience stores that stock only local beer and kombucha).

A lot of Austin graffiti and mural painting has an explicitly commercial focus. Take, for example, the newest addition to my visual neighborhood at Tyson’s Tacos on Airport. On one side of the building’s facade you find the saccharine maxim, “A kiss blown is a kiss wasted.” Heading south, you get a view of their knit-bombed fence that asks in six-foot neon pink letters, “IF NOT NOW, WHEN?” Well, that's one question. Here are my questions: why has this business taken it upon itself to cheese up the gentrifying neighborhood? What is the point of ads like this? What do they have to do with tacos? Bonus question: is knit bombing graffiti?

Photos from Yelp, modified by author using DipTic

They aren’t the only place in town using the sweet, the inspirational, and the irrelevant as guiding principles for their street art. Over at the United Way Austin building on MLK, a mural went up this spring with a piece of bread, a melty yellow pat, and the sappy tag line, “You’re My Butter Half.” While this is a mural for a non-profit, there’s no question that it went up as an effort to rebrand the organization’s Austin branch. And, just like Liz Lambert’s “I love you so much” at Jo’s on South Congress, this graffiti is ripe for engagement photos. In a word: barf. A quick internet search led me to a post on a site called Hipstercrite titled "MOST ROMANTIC PLACES IN AUSTIN TO INSTAGRAM ON VALENTINE’S DAY." Double barf, y’all.

Photo credit: Hipstercrite

Not all advertising graffiti is lame or nausea-inducing, though. In fact, some of my favorite Austin street art can be found in faded advertisements on the exposed brick of remaining early Austin buildings downtown, like the Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum facade (though I suspect the new Marriott building has covered it up by now). Graffiti ads like these provide some of the few visuals that remain of a prior Austin; they give a mostly new city some visual history. So, is graffiti advertising all that bad?

Austin’s Ian Dille would say yes.* His wife’s framing studio was recently graffiti bombed by the Arcade Fire’s guerilla marketing strategy for their new album. Graffiti versions of the album cover for Reflektor appeared overnight.

Photo credit: Ian Dille

In an op-ed on Slate’s “Browbeat” blog, Dille writes,

If you’re a talented young artist who considers the urban environment your canvas, by all means, spray-paint a building. If you’ve got a radical social agenda and you think spray-painting property is the best way to convey your message? Go ahead...But if you’re an internationally renowned band that’s defacing public and private property for promotional purposes, maybe go back to the drawing board, and think some more about how you want to let people know about your music.

If you haven’t read about it yet, it’s worth a mull. Especially because Win Butler replied to Dille in a handwritten note, now published below the article. Cute handwriting, Win, but lame excuses.

*Shoutout to Rhiannon Goad, who pointed me to this mini scandal.

For more on graffiti, see this week's other contributions:

What is graffiti and who does it belong to?

Graffiti? I'll know it when I see it. Or not.

Jeremiah the Innocent Icon

Renovating Austin: New Homes In Old Neighborhoods

Jay Voss — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

There’s an odd thing happening in Austin’s older neighborhoods: people are moving in, tearing down whatever 1930s homes they find on their lots, and in these spaces constructing decidedly modern dwellings. The subsequent structure stands out on its block like you wouldn’t believe. There’s such a disparity between the neighborhood’s older ranch homes and these new structures of corrugated metal and cantilevered edges. It’s a contrast between the standout and the ubiquitous, and the standout wins the eye every time. To make things more interesting: the locals I’ve asked hate these new structures, while those of us who’ve moved here recently tend to find them more inviting. I’m not sure where I stand on the issue. Although I see and understand the detriment one might perceive in continuity’s disruption, isn’t such materialistic continuity exactly what Austinites are constantly going out of their way to subvert? What gives? Aren’t we all supposed to applaud when something immaterial keeps Austin weird? Coming at the issue from a different angle, I’m a fairly serious student of architecture, and so for me it’s always refreshing to see tasteful structures going up (no matter what the situation, really). To this end I think architecture in its purist form encourages balance and harmony, and building a mansion amidst cottages (just for irony’s sake, I guess) is arrogant and misguided.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

I bring all this up because such a mansion is going in just around the corner from where I live. The site’s been under construction for about 18 months now, which seems a bit long given the speed with which most of the structure’s gone up. Either the project ran into some financing issues or everyone’s really taking their time. I tend to suspect the latter. Crews have constantly been working on the home over the past year – everything from the windows to the floors to the fixtures seems to have been installed with patience and care. This long construction hasn’t bothered me one bit, as I’ve greatly enjoyed considering the uninhabited house. It’s an unconventional structure. For starters, the lot is oddly shaped – it’s an extremely long rectangle (maybe 50 feet by 150 feet). It’s on the edge of a block, with one 150-foot side marked by busy 31^st street. The obvious place to put this home would be as far from 31^st street as possible, affording the future residents some privacy. Surprisingly, the architect (Jay Farrell) decided to plot the home right along 31^st street, with the front of the structure facing inwards towards the side of the neighboring house. The house is at once hidden from and exposed to a busy street, and I can’t decide whether the decision is humble or masturbatory. Before I jump to conclusions, the new residents may have kids or animals that they want to shield from the street, and maybe this is the best way to safeguard the vulnerable.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

And so it’s interesting to think about how this very modern structure relates to its chosen neighbors. Down the street are a few homes on the Texas State Historical Register, across the street is the Austin Zen Center, across and further along down 31^st street are many ranch homes that constitute (I’ve been told) Austin’s old red light district, and to the garage-side of the new home is a small apartment complex that can be a bit rough. Back when the new home’s lot was still vacant, some of the complex’s residents used to blast heavy metal through an open door and try to shoot bottles in the vacant lot with a riffle. In this way, to varying degrees, it has always seemed as though one resident of the complex is imposing themselves on another. I wonder if the proud owners of the new home across the street have any knowledge of this? I wonder if they have any knowledge of the traffic created by the Austin Zen Center on weekends? At heart, I wonder if the attempted urbanism of this lovely new home is compromised by a simple misunderstanding of place.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

I can’t say what existed in this home’s place previously – it’s been a vacant lot for as long as I can remember – and I’m not sure what my new neighbors are trying to prove. The great architecture is, sadly, a bit like a sore thumb. I’d like to give the architect my approval, however – he designed a great building given what his client’s offered him.

Keeping It Weird: Leslie as Austin’s Icon

Rachel Schneider — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 03:12:33 +0000

Image Credit: Austin Culture Map

H/T: Noel Radley

Austin’s Thirteenth Annual East Pet Parade, held just last Saturday, not only celebrated “family, friends, and of course our furry friends,” but also Austin resident Leslie Cochran, who passed away a month before. The organizers encouraged owners to dress their dogs in drag in Cochran’s honor, so Chris Perez dressed her dog Leslie in traditional Leslie garb: a pink bra and a feather boa.

(NSFW after the jump.)

While dogs in drag make an interesting sight, the parade memorialized Leslie not only for his unique fashion but also his status as one of Austin’s most famous residents. The impact of his recent illness and subsequent death stretched from gossip blogs to The New York Times, from Twitter feeds and Facebook posts to City Hall, where Austin’s Mayor Lee Leffingwell declared March 8, the day of his passing, Leslie Cochran Day. When Mayor Leffingwell recognized Leslie in his proclamation as “an icon in the Keep Austin Weird scene for many years,” he indirectly acknowledged that Leslie was an Austin icon because Austin, like Leslie, has been known for being “weird.” Yet his passing seemed to put this into question, as The Huffington Post asked, “Can Austin Stay Weird?” I’d like to take the opportunity here to think through not only Leslie’s status as an Austin icon, but also how Austin’s “weirdness” is put under continual contention.

Image Credit: Austin-American Statesman

One other reason that Leffingwell’s proclamation gives for naming March 8 Leslie Cochran Day is that “many Austin visitors and tourists over the years have an indelible image in their minds of Leslie as a reminder of their trip to our fair city.” Leslie represented Austin in part through his own enacted visibility. His outfits, which often involved high heels, hose, tiaras, and thongs, made him notorious in the South Congress neighborhood and through downtown Austin. This image translated into refrigerator magnet sets in which you could dress Leslie in various costumes, including naughty and nice Santa suits. If Leslie represented Austin, the Austin he displayed was aggressively non-normative. While Leslie himself was friendly, his self-chosen homelessness and clothing directly opposed him to traditional suburban ideas of normal.

Image Credit: Austin-American Statesman

Leslie, though, was not just a fashion plate. While his three mayoral campaigns certainly protested against politics as usual like Screaming Lord Sutch and the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, Leslie also demonstrated an Austinite political activism. The video for his 2000 mayoral campaign shows a man interested in smart growth, transportation, and environmental conservation. However, Leslie also advocated for Austin’s homeless population and, later, police accountability:

One noticeable point that his supporters make is that “Leslie is here for everybody … he’s for the people. He’s here for the homeless.” The video’s evidence for this claim is the images of Leslie holding the baby at Barton Springs, walking around and talking to people outside Waterloo Records, near the Starbucks on Sixth and Congress, people jogging on the Town Lake Trail. As Leslie says, the problem with government is that we’ve got “a whole lot of politicians and very few statesmen.” Leslie never became a member of the state, but his state became tied to Austin’s status as a “weird” city.

Image Credit: Austin-American Statesman

What, however, makes Austin “weird”? While its weirdness has been tied up in things like Eeyore’s Birthday and Hippie Hollow, the slogan’s origins were in supporting local businesses. It was, in Red Wassenich’s words, “a small attempt to counter Austin's descent into rampant commercialism and over-development.” However, Austin’s weirdness has been continually challenged over the last few years. Landmarks like the Cathedral of Junk, Emo’s, and SXSW have disappeared or been corporatized. The city’s east side has undergone significant gentrification. “Keep Austin Weird” was trademarked not by the slogan’s originator, but by a group who uses it to market coffee mugs and bumper stickers. Before his death, Leslie was planning to move from Austin back to Colorado. Austinist even declared that NPR was "so over Austin". In short, when the Dallas Observer can write articles about Austin’s lost cool, you know the city’s cred is in trouble.

Image Credit: Keep Austin Weird

However, what might make Austin Austin is not just its lack of rain or the prevalence of breakfast tacos, but Austinites’ disdain for a changing Austin. In other words, South By is always already uncool, because it always was better before—just like South Congress, the music scene, and everything else. As Austin Culture Map recommends:

“To all the listmakers and smart people calling Austin the greatest, smartest, funnest, most awesomest place ever laid on the earth by God: STOP. Those of us who saw the light emanating from Austin and walked toward it back in the 70s and 80s would like to put up the gates and love our city to death before we lose yet another awesome Austin-tatious cool place like Liberty Lunch or the Armadillo.”

In short, Austin has always been a site for cultural contention between those who treasure Austin as it is and outsiders who want to take part in Austin's unique culture. While Leslie’s death may have motivated much hand-wringing over whether or not Austin is, can be, or still is weird, I’d like to think Austin’s weirdness can never die as long as those here adopt it. In other words: if Austin is going to the dogs, as long as they're wearing pink boas, I think Austin’s weirdness (and Leslie’s) will live on in our hearts.

Protesting What?

Jay Voss — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:00:00 +0000

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

“Here we go again, same old rat again…” Students and staff at UT Austin have undoubtedly noticed the protesters outside of the University Co-Op this semester. Every weekday, 15 to 20 determined workers gather on the sidewalk just south of Guadalupe and 23^rd Street, and picket all morning until noon. The spot is especially smart given that all major southbound bus routes let out at the exact spot. Thousands of UT students and staff pass by these protestors every morning during the final stages of their commutes. The group’s chants echo eastward through one of the campus’ main pedestrian thoroughfares, all the way up to the revered UT-Austin bell tower. So I was surprised when a polling of my students revealed that none of them knew what the group stood for.

I figured that surely my students were preoccupied with, shall we say, more scholastic concerns. However, a random sampling of my colleagues revealed that they too were ignorant of the picketers’ demands. To a certain extent, this is to be expected, as students are unlikely to be the target audience for disgruntled workers’ economic demands. But it seems equally unlikely that a group of protestors would go to such extremes in a public venue only to direct their cause at a very limited private audience. For the benefit of the protestors, my students and colleagues, and the clarity of what seems to be a fraught rhetorical situation, I thought I’d take this opportunity to mention that the group represents Carpenters Local Union 1266.

It’s unfortunate for many reasons that Local 1266 doesn’t clearly state their demands. First and foremost, the union is paying the picketers for their time on the line, and the longer this ambiguous protest persists, the longer these carpenters will be out of work and unable to pay their dues. Secondly, in drought years, the Texas autumn is not kind. The longer this protest persists, the longer these protesters will unfortunately have to spend in dehydrating conditions for a cause that only they know about. Finally, the contrast between the protesters and UT’s commuting students couldn’t be more rhetorically advantageous for Local 1266. The workers are clearly sweating through all their clothing in 100-degree heat and not enjoying it, while the students, smelling of Axe Body Spray and perfume and talking of all tomorrow’s parties, negligently walk by.

Visually, all that’s apparent from the protest is that the picketers consider something to be “UNFAIR,” as this is the only word on their signs legible to passersby. This nebulous inequity is emphasized by the explicit visual contrast between the workers and the steady stream of passing UT students and staff. While I have no skin in our country’s ongoing conversation about unions, for the purposes of this blog it might be apt to pause for a moment and consider how such a stand might be more visually successful:

(Image Credit: buzzfeed.com)

Texas Wildfires and Nonlinear Disaster Narratives

Steven J LeMieux — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:14:48 +0000

Image Credit: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Since this past Sunday the local wildfires have been a dominant force in the Texas media. Over 1,000 homes and 35,000 acres were destroyed in the Bastrop area alone, and while the Bastrop fire has been contained there are more and more reports of fires springing up north of Houston and throughout East Texas. It would be a mistake, though, to consider this rash of wildfires an isolated event. As the months long drought has continued wildfires have been nervously anticipated alongside cracked foundations and the flooding a serious rain could bring. The images that surround this disaster carry with them that sense of inevitability. The standard series of disaster photos, though, cast confusion around the event—by forcing the fires into a basic linear narrative we are given the impression that things have settled down even as dozens of blazes continue to advance.

This photo, from Monday the 5th showcases the kind of impending doom that the fire offers. Huge plumes of smoke obscure the horizon and sky as it moves through the trees and brush. Online galleries covering the disaster are full of these smoke-on-the-horizon photos. The Austin American-Statesman has galleries for both user-submitted and professional photographs that contain an organized record of the events. These photos, though, betray the nonlinearity of the fires. They advance a notion of impending danger while hiding the current and previous destruction that the fires cause.

As regular consumers of disaster photos we have come to expect a linear progression in our imagery. Disasters either begin suddenly and thus burst onto the scene immediately, or they are tracked as they advance. In the latter case the disaster is visible before the fact; people anxiously await landfall. There is a striking similarity between images of hurricanes as they descend on a coast and the smoke covered horizons of the Texas photos. Tracking maps featured on sites like Weather Underground (a fire map and ahurricane map) highlight these differences.

Once the disaster strikes we are greeted with images of its initial impact—the disaster in action, videos and pictures of broad destruction as it occurs. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck Japan earlier this year were accompanied by a huge number of these images. Then, most commonly, the secondary after effects and destruction are captured—buildings and trees laid flat, piles of debris, stranded animals and people. Finally we see cleanup, rescue and reconstruction.

Image Credit: Eric Gay ASSOCIATED PRESS via HOUSTON CHRONICLE

These before and after shots of the smiling water tower near Bastrop (which, it should be noted, have been taken by two different photographers. The after-shot, as an AP image, has been much more widely circulated.) act as the classic before and after of the disaster. They tell its story in two shots through familiar themes in children’s movies. The little tower that could was blithely unaware of the horror about to engulf him, but through pluck and determination he has emerged unscathed and still smiling. But this truncated linearity can only be plucked out of the deluge of images after the fact. It has not been so easily formed as in standard disaster narratives.

Video credit: Texas Parks and Wildlife

Because of how the fires move through the environment they create heterogeneous activity across the affected area. This results in the jumbled picture of the disaster that has been displayed so far. Even on the first day of the fires there were images of impending disaster, destruction and after effects. Alan Taylor collected a wonderful set of images in his blog In Focus that show this kind of jumble. The Austin American-Statesman’s photo gallery, arranged in a chunky chronology, is also a great example of this.

There is a tension at play here, though. As the central Texas fires are contained we are presented with more and more standard clean up photos. Disaster images demand a resolution. While fires continue to burn throughout Texas we are on the recovery phase of the narrative. Initially what was considered a single, widespread event is broken down into a set of linear narratives.

The Impermanent Art of Graffiti

Michael Widner — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:30:00 +0000

Graffiti by Banksy, Image via Holy Taco

As many of Banksy's works show, graffiti can convey social commentary. For example, the painting above, which shows a city worker sandblasting the famous Lascaux cave paintings just as he would modern day graffiti, wittily laments the blindness of local governments to public art.

The antagonism between government and graffiti artists is understandable; we cannot expect government officials to determine what is art and what is vandalism. At the same time, graffiti is public art to be encouraged, not suppressed. The longstanding criminality of the form makes it ideal for subsersive and counter-cultural messages. Even so, alongside simple, unappealing tags or wall-sized, astoundingly intricate paintings of pseudonyms, graffiti that bears an explicit message stands out. While Banksy's skillful works transmit these messages with a vigorous and unique style that accounts for much of his popularity, this type of work is seen elsewhere.

I discover such didactic art throughout Austin. The guiding philosophy rejects consumerism and conformity. I came across two particularly nice examples yesterday, while walking along the Pfluger pedestrian bridge over Town Lake:

"Breathe" is a call for mindfulness and focus within a series of images seemingly unconnected by anything other than style and color. "Robots" playfully suggests that we already act like robots without realizing it.

As Nate Kreuter notes in his post on graffiti, a key element is the audacity of the artist. Painting this train bridge surely counts as daring. A KXAN news report about the water rescue required for a tagger who jumped from it after being caught in broad daylight exemplifies the dangers. The reporter calls the artist a "graffiti vandal" and notes his bongos were also found; she thus makes it clear that this individual and, by extension, the art form in which he was engaged, is deviant and deserving of mockery.

But note the height of the bridge from which he jumped:

Why would someone take such a risk to create public art that many consider mere vandalism, art that the city will surely blast away within weeks if not days? The transitory nature of this form has led websites like Art Crimes to try and preserve via photographs the various pieces, including some in Austin. Here are two paintings by the same artist (Gomer) in the same place:

"Gomer" images via Art Crimes

The impermanence of the medium is, itself, part of the meaning. Not only must we reflect on the formal characteristics and the explicit or implicit messages, but also the effort put forth by an artist who knows the work will disappear. The result is an anonymous, altruistic art that momentarily beautifies and provokes before its inevitable destruction.