Thanks to dubizzle.com, Scott and Christie Grisham, and Shabir’s Pickup Truck Service, we now have everything that we could ever need moved into our apartment. Everything. We have a Christmas tree, a polar water cooler with hot and cold dispenser, espresso machine, toaster, rice cooker, router, phone, couch, love seats, dining suite, bookshelves, two beds (one king, one twin), coffee table, work table, bar table with stools, sheets, pillows, etc.
So this means that the end of our stay at the hotel is near. That also means that the internet connection is coming to an end. I’ll only be able to check in and keep in touch at wireless cafes until we can get internet in the apartment. That should be by the middle or the end of next week. We’ll do our best but it will be less frequent than it has been since Monday.
This morning I got up early and decided to take a walk in the early morning 90 degree coolness. There were some people out riding bicycles and jogging but not very many. I’m not sure what is up with the concrete tower with the wires and re-bar sticking out in all directions. I guess it’s in the process of being demolished but that is odd here as most things are on their way up, not down. Beth and I think it is really beautiful though!
After a morning orientation, we got a rental car and went to IKEA today. Driving the streets is pretty exciting here. They have not invented the grid yet in Dubai and are instead relying heavily on the roundabout and the u-turn. IKEA was exactly the same as one might find in Pittsburgh or Topeka. We aren’t psyched about doing home shopping at IKEA but we are also very interested in conserving our resources and the trip there by car was pretty fun. We actually may be buying some things off of someone locally who is leaving town. We’ll see about that tomorrow night. But we picked up essentials like dishes, towels, etc. today.
I’ve attached some photos of the University, the Mall of the Emirates, and construction on the metro stop by Bur Dubai.
More tomorrow. We should have some resolution on our apartment by then hopefully.
The day started with us sorting out the hotel mix up. It went fairly smoothly after Beth called the school, but when we went to the front desk to confirm everything, the staff insisted on talking to me, despite the fact that it is Beth who is the main guest and it is her job at the University that is arranging the accommodations. The guy at first ignored Beth and shook hands with me and expected me to explain the situation. But because 1. I didn’t really know what the situation was exactly, and 2. Beth was not having it, she did end up getting his attention and resolving the matter without my participation. That was really the only situation today that was so blatantly sexist but it was enlightening in its forcefulness.
Breakfast at the hotel consisted of Fatoosh Salad with Pomegranate for Beth and a Smoked Salmon Sandwich on Wheat Baguette with Horseradish Spread for me. It was great and it came to about $30 (US). Then it was off to the University. We took a cab there and it was about $4 and 10 minutes. Overall, we probably spent about $50 on cabs throughout the day.
Beth met with Yvonne and then Lily at the Human Resources department and Lily gave her the keys to our apartment (a building called “Al Madam” in Al Barsha near the Mall of the Emirates) along with some welcome cash and the money to furnish the apartment. The university is beautiful and the walking around the campus was our first real taste of 110 degree humid heat + intense sunshine. We waited in that sun for a cab to take us to the apartment for what seemed like far too long but was really only about 5 minutes. After about 3 minutes in direct sun your mind starts to wander to thoughts of water and shade and ac and you have to sort of nudge it back to the situation at hand.
The cab driver was not the best. Lily had warned us about that actually as we left her office. You really need to question the cab drivers here before you get in. Some of them may be more new to the city than you are even if you’ve only been her for 24 hours. So we sort of meandered around with the “help” of a pretty poorly conceived of map that was made by someone who had never been to the apartment building themselves since it has only been above grade for a month or two. We gave up and had him drop us near the Mall of the Emirates where we eventually walked around looking for “AL MADAM” on some building until we started seeing fata morgana instead and had to take refuge in the mall itself.
The mall is just huge. It’s the one with the indoor ski slope. We browsed through no less than 6 furniture stores the size of any Weisshouse or Arhaus or whatever. Prices seemed maybe a little up there but not unreasonable. Couches and beds for around 4000dhm and dining room sets around 2000dhm. But we couldn’t start buying stuff until we knew what the apartment looked like so we tried again. This time we got a cab driver who was willing to try and looked a little more competent. Still, we couldn’t find it exactly and we had him drop us off where we thought we were very close. We finally got our lead upon entering a corner grocery store where they have delivery men. They pointed us in the right direction and it wasn’t until we actually got inside and asked someone in the lobby that we knew it was the right place.
The real problem with wayfinding is that there is not a system of street addresses in Dubai. Most places are known of by the building name which sounds ok, but when 10 buildings are newly added every day to the pool of places, it turns out not to be a very good system. So even though our apartment building is on 31st Street in Al Barsha, it has no address number on that street. I’m not sure how mail will get to us but I will figure it out.
The inside of the apartment is a little hard and the design choices are just really bad — there’s no way around it — but it has potential and it is a design opportunity for us. The location is pretty good. It’s a little closer to downtown than the University and the proximity to the mall is convenient. There is a small chance that we will look at another place tomorrow but we’ll be happy there if that is the one.
From there we took another cab to Diera and the old Souks, meandered through the narrow winding streets selling mostly kitch made in China. Every 10th store or so is a beautiful rug shop or a great spice place. We may not have been in the best part since we kind of decided to get out blindly at the place that the cab driver said was “the souk”.
We had dinner at an Iranian restaurant near Dubai Creek. I ordered the “vegetarian platter” which it turns out consists of three kabobs of meat. It’s not “meat” though because one of the kabobs is chicken and it comes with lettuce on the side. There was a washed out photograph of the meal on the menu which after I looked at it again realized that it did look like meat, so it was kind of my fault. But the waitress would not leave the table from the moment we sat down. We said, “we’ll need a little time to look over the menu.” And she said, “ok,” but stayed there looking at us anyway. So I felt that I had to order quickly and didn’t take a good look at the photograph, paying attention to the name of the dish: “vegetables”. But after I explained to the waitress that I don’t eat meat or chicken at all, she really felt bad and said that she would find something for me. Then she kept coming back every 10 took a really strong liking to Beth, introducing herself and talking about how some people are not friendly and you could tell that Beth was a professor or something along those lines. Her English was hard to make out. But her name is Sunshine and she was one of the highlights of our day.
A lot of English is hard to make out in fact. Everyone “speaks” it and no one is shy about using it on you, but in a few cases during the day it really did no good at all.
Back at the hotel now and looking forward to our second day! Beth has a meeting at 10am and then we will probably rent a car which will give us a lot more freedom. It will be 180dhm/day but we spent about that much in cabs today and we have to drive to IKEA which is a bit of a distance.
Tomorrow we will start taking photos…
We have limited access to the internet at the hotel for now so we won’t be doing any streaming tonight. It’s 11:30 pm here and we are off to bed. The usual travel mishaps: delays and close connections, no hotel reservations but we are here and all is well with the world. It’s beautiful and hot.
Right now Elizabeth and I are sitting at gate D78 waiting to board our flight to JFK. We will arrive in Dubai at around noon Eastern time and if we can get wireless internet at the hotel we will be streaming the view from our window by 2 or 3pm Sunday which will be 10 or 11 pm there.
Below is the description of a project that Beth and I worked on with the invaluable assistance of my sister, Sarah. We had proposed the installation for the Northside Charm Bracelet grant and the text is taken from the grant application. Unfortunately, the grant was not received and the idea remains unfunded. We have had a few leads lately, but since we are on our way out of the country and things are a little hectic, we are sort of letting it drop for now. Perhaps we will find a similar space in which to install it in Dubai and there will be people there who think that it is worth funding such a cutting-edge new media installation. Sorry Pittsburgh…keep painting your murals. We’ll just have to wait for you to catch up to the rest of the public art world. Meanwhile, we are off to a place that is receptive of new ideas.
Plush Alley is a solar powered outdoor video art space accessible to the public 24 hours a day on Pittsburgh’s Northside.
Located adjacent to the parking lot at the corner of Sandusky and Lacock Streets (near a street once named Plush Alley) it will display two projections of video art projects that pay homage to the history of the Northside. The projectors will be powered by solar panels mounted above the projection boxes.
The videos will be programmed and controlled remotely through a wireless broadband server. There will be no need to access the on site equipment except for the occasional replacement of projector bulbs (4000 hour life), which will be done easily about twice a year with a ladder to a locked projection box access panel. In fact, the mounting height of nearly 20 feet will discourage any would be vandals from tampering with the equipment. This use of technology plus environmentally conscious design will innovatively assist in weaving contemporary art into the fabric of historical Pittsburgh. The binocular projections can be related or unrelated and could have the potential to be viewed stereoscopically.
The chosen location has extensive foot traffic on any given day, which includes pedestrians in route
to work downtown, sports fans, art lovers walking from the Warhol Museum (the projections would
be visible from the front door of the Warhol Museum) to the Mattress Factory, as well as residential
foot traffic. This diverse group of people moving through the Northside shares the common thread
of intersecting with this historical space. It is exciting to imagine the footsteps of history overlapping
with the activities of contemporary culture.
We wish to poetically illuminate a bit of this history, while at the same time standing as a model of art practice in the 21st century—a practice that understands that art, history, environment, and audience experience exist symbiotically. The location was also selected based on its southern orientation for prime solar exposure, and yet perpetual shade at the plane of the projection. These two elements existing together is quite unique and perfect for the use as video art space. It easily turns a once blighted space into a neighborhood asset that has relevance to a broad audience.
The inaugural video projection to be debuted on New Year’s Eve 2008 will be created by Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry and will be a stereoscopic design that metaphorically references Plush Alley’s history as researched at the Heinz History Center. We believe that Plush Alley meets the Charm Bracelet’s goals of innovation as well as enhancing the experience of the residents of and visitors to the Northside.
We perceive of the Plush Alley installation as Phase 1 of a larger community outreach project, eventually incorporating the Charm Bracelet’s other focus area of Educational and Youth Programming
as Phase 2.
Phase 2
Educational and Youth Programming (beginning June 20, 2009):
Merging the history of the Northside into educational programming with the children of the neighborhood. We will organize 2-day art day camps every other weekend in June and July pending availability of space. Potential spaces that we will approach include Northside churches, the Children’s Museum, and the New Hazlett Theater. During these 2-day art camps children will be introduced to various histories of the Northside, art making techniques, and the works of artists such as Jacob Lawrence. The children will have the opportunity to express their responses to these histories through art making.
The projects that the children create will be archived into a projected video at Plush Alley, as well as
into a growing archive contained on a website designed and maintained by Elizabeth Monoian. The value for the youth participating in these day camps and the public presentations of the artworks created during them are far reaching. The end results, we believe, are of self worth, neighborhood pride, and community accountability.
The specific histories that we will research and present to the children will be as follows:
1: Underground Railroad
2: Northside Architecture
3: Personal Histories
Phase 3
Curated New Media Space with Online Posted Weekly Programming Schedule
(beginning December 2009):
Taking Plush Alley to the next level, the videos projected during each day would be scheduled for
smaller periods of programming time. The schedule would be posted online and would be programmed
and updated weekly. An example of a typical day would be as follows:
6am-9am
Video Blog: Scrolling Text of Stories Told by Neighborhood Children
9am-12pm
Local Art Day Camp Production, Ages 6-8: A History of Charles Avery
12pm-3pm
Local Art Day Camp Production, Ages 9-12: The Underground Railroad in
Pittsburgh’s Northside
3pm-6pm
Video Artwork by Local Artists – Documentary
6pm-9pm
Video Art by Pittsburgh Students Age 13-18
9pm-12pm
Video Artwork by Local Artists – Avant Garde
12am-3am
Concept Pieces of Independent Artists: International Forum
3am-6am
Video Blog: Scrolling Text of Stories Told by Neighborhood Adults
