No Longer Empty

Certain [spaces] have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect.

I hesitate to bring “heterotopia” conversation. It’s an unfamiliar term that sounds pretentious without explanation. However, within the word lies a great concept--the tension between imagination and the built environment.  I think it’s especially relevant to the Andrew Freedman Home, the site of No Longer Empty’s upcoming exhibition.

In considering the transition from exclusive old age utopia to inclusive community center, hotel, and No Longer Empty’s exhibition site, Michel Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces” an essay on heterotopias- comes to mind. The essay is a little dense, yeah, but it appeals to those interested how everyday places are made and perceived.

Anyone familiar with the Andrew Freedman Home agrees:  it’s an mysterious space. Buffered from the Grand Concourse by a great green lawn, the Italian Renaissance style mansion is a visual departure from the surrounding neighborhood. While downstairs rooms host programs for seniors, the upstairs is disused (except by the resident flock of pigeons). Founded in the 1920s as a retirement palace for the formerly wealthy, the Home is undergoing major transitions almost one hundred years later.

To Foucault, heterotopias are the spaces that result when individuals move their utopian plans from their minds into real life. In the case of the Home, Andrew Freedman embedded his vision for retirement in style into the elegant mansion and the people he chose to inhabit it. Despite the creator’s intent, the space is a heterotopia precisely because it reflects but can never assume the exact dimensions of the vision in his mind’s eye.

Incidentally, Foucault identifies the retirement home as a heterotopia between deviance and crisis—“since, after all, old age is a crisis, but is also a deviation since in our society where leisure is the rule, idleness is a sort of deviation.” I should clarify: it’s not a crisis to be old. Crisis comes from the Greek krisis, ‘decision’. Contrary to usual usage, crisis implies a time of acute struggle or difficulty, a time when crucial decisions must be made. The crisis [decision] Foucault’s referring to is universal: life inevitably ends, but one has no control over the time or date. In old age, that crisis point may seems closer than at other times in a person’s life.

The exhibition title, This Side of Paradise, plays on the idea of crisis and deviation. Where is paradise, and what side are we on, really?  As the Bronx reworks its image, residents and leaders must decide what gets included. It is a struggle to choose which attributes to celebrate and which histories to highlight. Paradise is a deviation from the norm, but it can be difficult to tell where that norm begins or ends.  Like the Bronx at large, the AFH is hard at work determining the present and future use of their spaces. As NLE prepares for the exhibition in this dynamic site, I’m interested to see how the artists in This Side of Paradise will work with the AFH heterotopia to reflect anew on the space.

Audrey Wachs, 2012