#and it's marble so fundamentally impractical

[expatesque]

Just bought an oval, marble topped French bistro table with cast iron legs for the kitchen. Fully embracing the unnecessary and frivolous for this flat redesign.

[quixotic-writer]

The Impractical Gattosby: Chapter 1

~Oh???? My god???? This was fucking INCREDIBLE!!!! Thank you for this spectacular submission! I’m truly blown away! Please please PLEASE post this on AO3 or Wattpad because I want you properly credited with this work and I want so many others to read this!

In Murr’s younger and more vulnerable years his father gave him some advice that he’s been turning over in his mind ever since.

“James, whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told him, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more but they’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and he understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence he is inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to Murr and also made him the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that at college, Murr was unjustly accused of being a ferret, because he was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently he has feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when Murr realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. He is still a little afraid of missing something if he forgot that, as his father snobbishly suggested, and Murr would snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of his tolerance, Murr came to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point he didn’t care what it’s founded on. When he came back from Staten Island last autumn he felt that he wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; he wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gattosby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from Murr’s reaction—Joe Gattosby who represented everything for which Murr has an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “comedic genius"—it was an extraordinary gift for confidence, a type of shamelessness such as Murr has never found in any other person and which it is not likely he should ever find again. No—Gattosby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gattosby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out his interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Murr’s family were prominent, well-to-do people in the northeast for three generations. The Murrays are something of a clan and they have a tradition that they’ve descended from Italian and Irish nobility, but the actual founder of his line was his grandfather’s brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale business that Murr’s father carries on today.

He never saw this great-uncle but he’s supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father’s office, sporting a shiny bald head. Murr graduated from Georgetown University in 1915, and after he decided to go to New York and learn the motion picture industry. Everybody he knew was in the motion picture industry so he supposed it could support one more single man. All his aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for him and finally said, “Why—ye-es” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance him for a year, using the funds that would have otherwise gone towards purchasing for him an automobile, and after various delays he went to New York, permanently, he thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and he had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that they take an apartment together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the place, a weather beaten cardboard apartment at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Los Angeles and he went out to the country alone. Murr had a dog, Penny, at least he had her for a few days until she ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made his bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than Murr, stopped him on the road.

“How do you get to Staten Island?” he asked helplessly.

Murr told him. And as he walked on he was lonely no longer. Murr was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on him the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—he had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. Murr bought a dozen volumes on motion pictures and cameras and they stood on his shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and Rudolph Valentino knew. And he had the high intention of reading many other books besides. He was rather literary in college—not only was he an English major, but one year Murr wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the “Georgetown News"—and now he was going to bring back all such things into his life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that he rented an apartment in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous boroughs, identical in contour and separated only by water, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Upper New York Bay.

Murr lived at Staten Island, the—well, the less fashionable of the two boroughs, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. His apartment was at the very tip of the island, only fifty yards from the Bay, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on his right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gattosby’s mansion. Or rather, as he didn’t know Mr. Joe Gattosby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. His own apartment was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so he had a view of the water, a partial view of his neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable Brooklyn glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening he took the Staten Island Ferry there to have dinner with the  Vulcano-Quinns. Sal Vulcano was his former brother-in-law from when Murr had married Sal’s sister for three days, and he’d known Brian “Q” Quinn in his Monsignor Farrell High School days.

Sal’s husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever worked for the Fire Department of New York—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family was enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d come to Brooklyn in a fashion that rather took one’s breath away: for instance he’d bought three cats named Benjamin, Brooklyn, and Chessie. It was hard to realize that a man in Murr’s own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came to New York, Murr doesn’t know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Sal over the telephone, but Murr didn’t believe it—he had no sight into Sal’s heart but he felt that Q would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable fire to fight.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening he rode the Staten Island Ferry over to Brooklyn to see two old friends whom he scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than Murr had expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Brian Quinn was at the front porch.

He had changed since his Monsignor Farrell High years. Now he was a sturdy, dark-haired man of thirty with a rather magnificent beard and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant hazel eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his newsboy cap and silk American-flag print scarf could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were guys at high school who had hated his guts.

“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” They were in the same Improv Club, and while they were never intimate Murr always had the impression that Q approved of him and wanted him to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

They talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

“It belonged to Mrs. Calabash, my neighbor.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”

They walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two men were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their clothes were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. Murr must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Q shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two men ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. He was extended full length at his end of the divan, completely motionless and with his chin raised a little as if he were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If he saw me out of the corner of his eyes he gave no hint of it—indeed, Murr was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed him by coming in.

The other man, Sal, made an attempt to rise—he leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then he laughed, a loud boisterous laugh that soon had him falling to the floor, and he laughed too and came forward into the room.

“Oh my gawd, I’m p-paralyzed with happiness.”

He got up to  only laugh and almost fell to the floor once again, as if he said something very witty, and held his hand for a moment, looking up into Murr’s face, promising that there was no one in the world he so much wanted to see. That was a way he had. Sal hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing man was Jost. (Murr has heard it said that Sal’s murmur was only to make people lean toward him; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Casey Jost’s lips fluttered, he nodded at Murr almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped his head back again—the object he was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given him something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to Murr’s lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from him.

Murr looked back at his former brother-in-law who began to ask him questions in his low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. His face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright green eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in his voice that men who had cared for him found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that he had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

[valuentumbrian]

ALERT: Bull Raids, Short Squeezes and Highly Unusual Market Activity

We are putting short investors on high alert!

By Brian Nelson, CFA

In late 2018, Valuentum published Value Trap, a book that warned to all that would heed its warning that a collapse in the traditional quant value factor was coming and that excessive volatility in the markets caused by price-agnostic trading--or those that aren’t paying attention to fair value estimate calculations--would only build and build to eventually reach extreme and irrational levels. The book, while hugely successful winning award after award, was largely ignored by the media, despite our best efforts to get the word out. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Image Shown: The book Value Trap warned about the impending collapse of the value factor, and during 2020, the value factor registered its worst performance in history. We continue to believe large cap growth is underpriced. Image Source: Bloomberg.

As you are aware (and probably tired of hearing by now), the “value factor” had its worst showing in history during 2020, as predicted, and while broader market indices continue to reflect somewhat reasonable levels of volatility (following the excessive levels during the COVID-19 crash), we’re now starting to see the type of volatility on individual names that we think will only grow in number to eventually become large enough to impact broader market indices in time. Our “Call to Action” in Value Trap remains, and we encourage regulators to promote the application of active management (and enterprise valuation) via policy regulations that limit dangerous vehicles in a bid to ensure market integrity and stability for posterity. Indexing is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and its bite will leave deep scars in the financial system if not curbed.

To the layman, if you’re a believer in climate change and how this generation is harming the future, it’s far worse what is happening in finance today. Pollution is everywhere. With just ~10% of all trading based on discretionary fundamental fair value analysis, with indexing and quant trading increasing (momentum and trend following algorithms), with mis-education at all-time highs given the documented failures of perceived “truths” in quant finance, future generations may be left with a complete and absolute mess of a financial and market system if we don’t get back to enterprise valuation. Instructors: Teach your students well – teach them enterprise valuation. Make Value Trap required reading.

Gordon Gekko is wrong: Greed is not good. Brokers selling index funds pointing to failed modern portfolio theory as justification and quants running sophisticated algorithms based on short-cut multiple analysis and impractical data will only grow to be a recipe for disaster. Were it not for the swift action of the Fed/Treasury during the depths of the COVID-19 crisis, the financial system would have already witnessed its doom. Many stocks in indexes would have gone to zero, driving underperformance of traditional indexes relative to active management of mammoth proportions, all but securing the demise of Bogle’s folly. Far too many investors are not paying attention to the intrinsic worth of their assets--and counting on the Fed/Treasury to bail out indexers (not active managers) time and time again with tax-payer money is no plan for longevity. Indexing is not free or inexpensive; it has cost the tax payers hundreds of billions, maybe trillions.

We witnessed but a glimpse of irrational market activity and extreme levels of volatility earlier this year. On March 25, 2020, the SEC halted trading in shares of Zoom Technologies (ZOOM) because many were confusing its ticker symbol with a similarly named NASDAQ-listed company, Zoom Video Communications (ZM). More recently, a January 7th tweet by Tesla CEO Elon Musk saying nothing more than “Use Signal” sent shares of the stock Signal Advance (SIGL) over 400%+ higher. The only problem is that Musk was talking about a messaging app called Signal that rivals Facebook’s (FB) Messenger and Apple’s (AAPL) messaging service, not the company listed under the ticker SIGL. Traders may have been engaging in pump-and-dump schemes using misinformation as the tool, as Signal Advance now trades for ~$5.50, down from its irrational high of ~$38 per share.

Image Shown: Shares of Signal Advance (SIGL), a company that uses signal technologies in biomedicine and other areas, shot up aggressively on a tweet from Elon Musk saying to use a completely unrelated messaging app called Signal. Image Source: Yahoo, Twitter.

These are not one-off events. In the early months of 2020, irrational speculation also reached a precipice in the stocks of bankrupt and near-bankrupt companies, as speculators in the popular Robinhood app whipsawed prices of Hertz (HTZ), Whiting Petroleum (WLL), GNC (GNC), and Chesapeake Energy (CHKAQ) around. On June 8, 2020, for example, Hertz’s and Whiting Petroleum’s shares, while still lower significantly on the year, closed approximately 10-fold higher from prices around the time of their respective bankruptcy filings during this mania.

Then there was Hong-Kong listed ArtGo Holdings. The marble-stone miner’s share price ran up 3,800%, nearly 40-fold, during 2019, with the majority coming on news that MSCI would add the stock to its suite of indexes. However, just a couple weeks after the announcement, on November 21, 2019, MSCI pulled a U-turn, saying it would not add the stock to its indexes. The news sent shares of ArtGo Holdings tumbling 98% that Thursday morning, wiping clean an incredible $5.7 billion of market value. The markets are showing signs that the price-discovery mechanism is breaking down, and indexing is not an innocent bystander.

Image Shown: Shares of GameStop have been on an irrationally wild ride recently driven by what looks to have been an orchestrated and highly unethical (and perhaps illegal) short squeeze on the stock. According to some reports, during the pre-market session January 25, GameStop’s shares were up ~80%, and turned red during the trading session, with no fundamental news.

Recent “bull raids,” or aggressive and orchestrated “short squeezes” on stocks, have been the most prominent evidence of excessive volatility and irrational market behavior driven by Reddit WallStreetBets users and Robinhood traders, only exacerbated by price-agnostic trading from traditional quant algorithms. With a short interest of ~150%, GameStop’s (GME) shares, for example, went from a 52-week low of $2.57 in March 2020 to a 52-week high of $159.18 in January, and are now trading at ~$70-$80 per share at the time of this writing--still far above what may be considered to be a fair value estimate of the equity.

There are other instances, too. Other heavily shorted stocks including Express (EXPR), Macerich (MAC), Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), and AMC Entertainment (AMC) have been tools of trading madness in recent weeks. At the time of this writing, Express’ shares are up over 90%, Macerich’s are up 16%, Bed Bath & Beyond are up over 8%, and AMC’s are up over 28% -- all on no news other than they are companies with heavy short interest. As with the “fad” of investing in bankrupt companies earlier in 2020, it seems like the trading sharks are circling heavily-shorted names to drive aggressive short-squeezes, often in conjunction with the application of deep out of the money call options.

We’re paying close attention to these dynamics as we monitor our short idea considerations in the Exclusive publication. We’ve put up some tremendous success rates when it comes to short ideas—through October 2020, the success rate for short idea considerations was 92.3% over 52 ideas spanning 52 months--but we’re writing today in part to put our readers on high alert when it comes to short investing. Though we still like our latest two short idea considerations, DoorDash (DASH) and Palantir (PLTR), they have moved against us since we highlighted them. Palantir was up 25% on nothing more than news of a Demo Day. Our thesis on these ideas hasn’t changed, but the market’s behavior certainly has. For short investors, caution is the order of today.

Concluding Thoughts    

We believe a fair value estimate on the S&P 500 (SPY) is 3,530-3,920, and with the S&P 500 trading at ~3,825 at the time of this writing, the markets are fairly valued based on common-sense metrics. You can read about how we value the market in our 2020 recap here. We maintain our view that the areas of big cap tech, large cap growth, and the NASDAQ are attractive, and we continue to point to Facebook (FB) and Alphabet (GOOG) as two of the most undervalued stocks on the market. Large cap growth (SCHG) has outperformed small cap value (IWN) roughly 60 percentage points since the beginning of 2019, or about the time that Value Trap was published. Best Ideas Newsletter holding Korn/Ferry (KFY) is one of the biggest fundamental mispricings we see at the moment.

That said, even though markets are fairly priced and we think certain areas offer bargains, systemic risks are increasing as price-agnostic trading in the likes of quant and indexing has now been augmented by trading from Reddit platforms such as WallStreetBets and Robinhood traders looking to make a big score in the market. We’re still playing it cool, and nothing should be surprising to our readers. We called almost every step of the way in 2020, and extreme and irrational levels of volatility are the next chapter in the book Value Trap. The markets won’t get completely out of whack for years yet, however, and we hope Value Trap, in raising awareness of the pitfalls of the ways of indexing and quant investors, will make it so the path to financial destruction will never materialize.

We’re available for any questions.

Most Shorted Stocks, short interest as a % of float: GME, FIZZ, DDS, MAC, BBBY, LGND, AMCX, SRG, GOGO, SPWR, AXDX

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Valuentum members have access to our 16-page stock reports, Valuentum Buying Index ratings, Dividend Cushion ratios, fair value estimates and ranges, dividend reports and more. Not a member? Subscribe today. The first 14 days are free.

Brian Nelson owns the SPY, SCHG, DIA, QQQ, VOT, and IWM. Some of the other companies written about in this article may be included in Valuentum's simulated newsletter portfolios. Contact Valuentum for more information about its editorial policies.

[bestdestinationplace]

Udaipur – The Romantic City Of Lakes

Udaipur is the southern 'large' city of Rajasthan, and furthermore the most sentimental one. The city is totally encompassed by green slopes diving into the Pichola Lake in the waters of which are impractically reflected. Udaipur is otherwise called the white city of India, on account of the real Rajput-style royal residences standing all around the lake. What's more, above all else in light of the beautiful white marble royal residence situated in it. Udaipur could be the token of that oriental dream for which India merits a visit.

Find this city with us perusing this total Udaipur City control.

WHEN TO GO

The best time to go to Udaipur is from October to March, when temperatures are gentle and dry. In April the blistering Indian summer begins with temperatures up to 40 degrees, while from July to September the blustery season could make your stay disagreeable.

WHAT TO VISIT

City Palace, Udaipur

Udaipur City Palace is the vastest Royal Palace complex in India. They took just about 400 years to fabricate it and it creates on an entire slope neglecting the Pichola Lake. Regardless of whether it could be considered as a solitary royal residence, it's really the aftereffect of the unification of 4 principle royal residences and different other minimal ones. Inside it is right around a maze and in the event that you would prefer not to go through a whole day to investigate it (or even to become mixed up in it) contract a guide that can show you the most significant spots!

View on Udaipur from Monsoon Palace

Otherwise called Sajjan Garh after the maharaja Sajjan Singh that manufactured it, the Monsoon Palace was developed in 1884 on the highest point of a high mountain simply outside Udaipur. The legend says that the maharaja constructed it so high since he needed to see from it Chittogarh, the city from where his precursors have landed to Udaipur. Aside the legend, from the Monsoon Palace you have without a doubt the best view on Udaipur and on its lakes.

Nehru Gardens, Udaipur

Nehru gardens wind up on a little island in Fateh Sagar Lake. On the island there are decent gardens and a sentimental bistro where to go through a charming evening. Found north of Udaipur, the Fateh Sagar Lake is viewed as one of the most wonderful spots of Udaipur, and consequently it's known as the 'second Kashemire'.

Jagadish Mandir Temple, Udaipur

Situated in the focal point of the white city, this sanctuary devoted to Vishnu, one of the fundamental divine forces of Hindu Pantheon, is the principle strict site of Udaipur. Inside the sanctuary you can locate a fine dark stone model that speaks to Vishnu as Jagannath, Lord of the Universe.

Exemplary vehicle Collection, Udaipur

The Vintage and Classic Car Collection is the vintage vehicle assortment of Mewar Royal family. It was opened to open in 2000. The vehicles on show have all had a place with the Maharajas of Udaipur at various times. Every one of the vehicles have been reestablished and are in working request. The assortment is housed in the first State Motor Garage, a fascination itself, with his half moon shape. Brilliant setting for such a fine grouping of vehicles. The engine carport was worked when the main autos around had a place with the illustrious family and the present day environment make this carport as superbly classy as it should consistently have been.

Chittorgarh Fort

Chittorgarh is a walled city found 120 km from Udaipur. The post is one of the most lovely in entire India, and the visit merits the adventure to arrive (you can likewise rest in Chittorgarh yet we propose to do it inside a day from Udaipur). The Mewar administration (Udaipur illustrious family) initially originates from this city. Chittorgarh principle fascination is the acropolis on the highest point of the slope that hosts stunning royal residences and marble sanctuaries.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Two Artists Make a Mess in the Name of Process

Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin, Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks (2017), installation view at Locust Projects, Miami (all photos by Marilyn Loddi, courtesy Locust Projects)

MIAMI — Rube Goldberg machines have a knack for revealing the fatuities of humanity: their wild impracticality yields very simple results that never required a fake boxing glove hitting a lightbulb connected to a pulley system in the first place. (A short film featuring Goldberg is aptly entitled “Something for Nothing.”) In her essay about Goldberg, Stefany Anne Golberg writes, “Rube Goldbergs were mechanical slapstick. They satirized the promise of technology, and the (American) idea that technology is progress. … the contraptions expose human folly, the ways in which we’re persistently falling over ourselves in a forward motion toward a predictably absurd finish.”

This is true, but surely the overly complex contraptions also offer an appraisal of the power of movement — of development and anticipation. The machines are a bit like the human routine of trial and error, enacted in real time — will it work? It did work! — and as such are a delight to watch, a revelation in little intricacies, a series of small reasons to feel excited, skeptical, and excited again. The banana successfully peeled at the end is simply the punchline.

Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin, Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks (2017), installation view at Locust Projects, Miami

For their exhibition, Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks, the Israeli husband-and-wife artist duo Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin created two contraptions designed to facilitate a painstaking process of creating balloons and ink. In doing so, they’ve transformed Locust Projects into a lab for play and durational performance, working in the gallery periodically throughout the exhibition’s first several weeks. Tamir describes her factory as a “magic box,” a modular, ketchup- and mustard-colored magnetic receptacle with nooks and crannies that she must open and close throughout her balloon-making process: lift this lid to find gloves, shut it and open another to get a tool. The balloons’ glass molds are shaped like intestines and organs, a reference to early toy balloons, which were made of animal innards. The glass-blown molds, which lay in cushy foam beds, are smooth in texture but bulbous, like a bladder. She warms the glass in a small oven, dips it into latex — the balloon’s skin — then places the latex in talc, smooths the balloon over, and finally fills it with helium.

Meanwhile, Zin’s factory looks like a restaurant kitchen countertop. It is industrious and mostly metal, and rolls throughout the space on mechanized wheels — a process that makes a lot of noise. Unlike Tamir’s balloon station, Zin’s houses actual animal fat, kept cool in a refrigerator. The fat is pumped through a grinder, filtered through a number of apparatuses, and slowly turned into grease and then into blue-black ink, which is sprayed around the gallery through a tube as the whole system moves, like an engine leaking oil.

Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin, Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks (2017), installation view at Locust Projects, Miami

Over time, the machines will fill the space with their corresponding products. They are clanging, mad-scientist tableaux — one bright and mostly stationary, the other loud and roving. They are neither efficient nor simple — the balloons don’t stay inflated for very long and the ink ends up splashed about —but the results are hardly the point. With their noise, color, and smell, the contraptions titillate the senses, and as far as objectives for an art piece go, transformation and sensorial arousal are certainly more exciting than efficiency. Like the experimentation of the artist in the studio, the inevitable mishaps of raising a child, or the apprehension as the marble drops into the net at the end of a Rube Goldberg, it’s the process that’s most significant.

“Larval Acceleration contends with philosopher Levi R. Bryant’s pan-mechanism,” the exhibition’s press release informs us. This theory posits that the body is one small part of a much larger, mechanized chain, specifically geared to make products for commerce — the body regulated to a “choreography  of movements,” manipulating various mechanisms with this specific goal in mind. But in the case of Larval Acceleration, this mechanization is humorous, even pleasurable, because the margins of error are clear. The balloons don’t float for long, and what are we to do with greasy ink on the floor? A sense of glee is apparent precisely because these mildly Sisyphean routines are all very fun to watch. Perhaps these machines unwittingly recall our difficult, daily attempts to make it all work, whatever “it” may be.

Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin, Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks (2017), installation view at Locust Projects, Miami

In a Q&A at the show’s opening, someone asked about catharsis — what’s the “A-ha!”­ moment here, the eventual release? “We were looking for materials that are non-conclusive,” Zin replied. “I’ve been interested in these processes that don’t really end or culminate. They don’t have a cathartic moment; grease keeps things lubricated and in motion. It’s a constant state of development.” Tamir added: “For us, this system is not to produce a balloon in the most efficient way. It’s almost the opposite — the most complex way to produce a balloon. […] And of course, it’s the story of being an artist in the studio, alone with your materials. We tried, in the most honest way, to think of how we could make something in which we constantly need to do things but would not be able to control it completely.”

Zin and Tamir’s ideology of anticlimax feels fundamentally contrary to romanticism: where there’s no apex from which to enjoy a cool refractory period, there’s no story, it seems. But bathos is the stuff of life, and referencing it via complex, clamoring processes that end in not-much serves as a kind of ode to the art of being human. Tamir’s balloons, flesh-colored and still matte with talc, float to the ceiling for just a short while before sinking to the floor, pooling like un-frothy bubbles. What determines the success of a balloon? They are not airborne for very long, but they are still beautiful.

Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin, Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks (2017), installation view at Locust Projects, Miami

Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin, Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks (2017), installation view at Locust Projects, Miami

Rotem Tamir and Omri Zin’s Larval Acceleration: A Conversation in Chunks continues at Locust Projects (3852 North Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida) through April 15.

The post Two Artists Make a Mess in the Name of Process appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[ranusoni-blog]

The History of flats in Mumbai

Bombay was the primary Indian city to see the development of the condo assembling, a pointer of both the city's initial grasp of innovation and its long-standing space crunch. Multi-story structures contained the urban sprawl, and the flat developed throughout the years, both as a lodging typology and a specialist of social change.

The chawl and its antecedent, the gaothan house, were group based lodging where individuals shared space and offices and were subject to each other. The decay of these in the mid-twentieth century and the ascendance of the loft piece mirrored a noteworthy move in the way individuals lived in Bombay. Lofts give individuals protection, in some cases a sentiment security, and dependably a namelessness that helps them shed their rank or group character and the confinements that these regularly involve. The property for sale in Mumbai were limited to plots or lands previously.  Not at all like the chawl and the gaothan, which appeared to fit the necessities of a specific time, the condo has consistently changed and developed…

Condos After RCC

As innovation enhanced, the condo building changed. The presentation of RCC innovation in the 1930s changed the building structure, while enhanced pipes and sanitation innovation likewise had its impact on outline. Singular pads in a few regions got to be distinctly bigger and formats changed. Toilets were no longer set toward one side of the condo – they could now be anyplace inside the level, if they adjoined an outside divider and were stacked more than each other in the building.

RCC floors were more waterproof than the prior joist-and-stone floors, which made it conceivable to join toilets to rooms. The utilization of sweepers to clean toilets decreased albeit winding staircases were some of the time still accommodated household hirelings and tradesmen to get to a level from the back of the building.

The flat square by definition is bland: institutionalized abiding units stacked by and more than each other, with every loft format fluctuating marginally. The main contrasts lie in the outline of the passageway, stair and lift corridor and verandah or overhang fronts. Regardless of the restrictions of the loft layout, a few modelers like Claude Batley and G B Mhatre were inventive and one of a kind in their condo plans, particularly in the way their structures were sited, proportioned and nitty gritty.

Batleys condos suited a western style of living, in spite of the fact that he stayed steadfast to customary Indian components like verandahs, chajjas and moldings. Like Walter George, the Delhi-based British modeler who was a piece of the group that outlined New Delhi, he trusted that flush surfaces (vast unbroken put surfaces of dividers) were best stayed away from since each building material moved and broke in the Indian atmosphere. Splits, brought about chiefly by shrinkage, could be contained if substantial zones were broken by courses that decreased the zone of a solitary surface. Batley likewise felt that stone was a superior material for outer dividers than block and mortar since it weathered better. Perpetually, he delegated his structures with pitched or inclining rooftops, which, he demanded, were the best security against Bombay's overwhelming rainstorm.

Batley trusted that building typologies ought to rise up out of comprehension a customer's method for living, and he took after that rule in his own particular practice. In the house he worked for understood Indian industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai on Carmichael Road, he found the kitchen at a level lower than the living and lounge area to oblige Lalbhai customary way of life in which the kitchen shouldn't be by the feasting zone. The choice to oblige this conviction by finding the kitchen at a lower level was molded by the way that development systems had effectively progressed impressively.

Mhatre was known for his Art Deco structures at the Oval and Marine Drive yet those are not really the best cases of his work. His later structures, Marble Arch on Pedder Road and Sanghi House on Nepean Sea Road, were exceptional when they were inherent the 1940s and remain so today. Both structures are particularly intriguing in their site situation and gateway. Marble Arch is bended so that both sides are viewed as you approach it from Pedder Road. The building is not set again from the street consistently. The rationale of its introduction gets to be clearer when you see that Marble Arch was a piece of a gathering of structures set around an open space. The abutting structures, KumKum, Ark Royal and Windcliff, likewise outlined by Mhatre, were a piece of the outfit. Marble Arch was current in the format of its rooms and their extents and points of interest, however the adjusted end of the lounge room demonstrates a hint of Art Deco.

Sanghi House, prior referred to just as 94 Nepean Sea Road, was intended to have its front edge parallel to the street – in any case, this element must be disposed of when a surrendered well was found on the plot. The proprietor, a Parsi woman, demanded that the building couldn't be developed over a well despite the fact that the well was not being used. So Mhatre cut out the corner and bended the front end. Sanghi House is present day in idea, but then some of its points of interest are Art Deco.

However fascinating these structures may be, Mhatre did not roll out any central improvement in the typology of the flat. Nor did some other designer of that time endeavor to locate a contrasting option to the routine loft square. Claude Batley veered off marginally from the standard condo design when he made duplex units – in the way of London porch houses – in structures like Gold Croft and White House on Gamadia Road. In White House, every one of the pads were on two levels associated by an inner staircase. Batley did this on the grounds that the impression of the building was little, and two extensive pads on one level were impractical. Be that as it may, duplex lofts stayed uncommon and structures which had both traditional pads and additionally duplexes were even rarer until Darshan Apartments was implicit the mid 1950s.

Darshan Apartments

Darshan Apartments on Mount Pleasant Road composed by Gautam and Gira Sarabhai was one of the early current structures in the city. As understudies, we were taken to see its development and were demonstrated the arrangements. This was the primary working in Bombay to be raised on stilts – a thought started by Le Corbusier. The apartments for sale in Mumbai got a new turn after the construction of these apartments.

'The free arrangement', as it was known, upheld the partition of the building's dividers and its supporting structure, and left the ground space for auto stopping – however we learnt substantially later that the territory under Le Corbusier's structures was rarely utilized for stopping autos. The 'pilotis', as he called those spaces, was utilized to outwardly associate the working to the spaces around it.

In Darshan Apartments, the ground level was utilized as a play zone and reached out to a deck over an auto stop. The upper floors contained a cunning blend of one-and two-level pads. The interlock of flats was skilfully done and was not seen on the veneer. The kitchens and workers' rooms on the south were masterminded effective and sparing utility lines and were on the less private side of the site. The principal rooms on the north opened onto an arranged garden. The plan and extent of spaces were utilitarian and normal, as were the decision and utilization of materials, which were cheap.

Darshan Apartments mirrored a portion of the thoughts of the cutting edge development. It was the primary working to have solid surfaces that were uncovered and not secured with mortar (a component seen later in Stanvac House and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay and also structures outlined by Le Corbusier at Chandigarh). Its floors were cleared with softened stone or tile laid up an uneven example, an idea prevalently known as insane clearing. Lift wells were confronted with harsh stone chunks laid one over the other.

There was an observable non appearance of chajjas or other climate securing gadgets on a portion of the veneers – a deviation from customary outline hone in India and a state of level headed discussion in our engineering school. The contention for this deviation was that the building was arranged with its more drawn out sides confronting north and south, and the principle rooms confronting north would not experience the ill effects of the rigors of the atmosphere. Subsequently, on the north side, rooms were completely coated with huge collapsing and sliding windows. The south side, which endures the worst part of the storms and warmth in summer, had the administration and utility territories of the loft. On this side, there were verandahs and louvers.

Darshan Apartments is moderate in its points of interest. For understudies like us, who were exceeding the Beaux Arts arrangement of instruction in our school of design, it was a decent case of the thoughts of the current development. It demonstrated that a decent building comes not from veneer making but rather from lucidity in distinguishing the necessities and the plan arrangement that takes after. Darshan Apartments set another pattern in condo outline, however its impersonations did not generally accomplish a similar level of artfulness or quality.

Kanchenjunga

Till Kanchenjunga was implicit the 1970s, the main deviation from the non specific arrangement of condo structures and the game plan of rooms inside the level was the two-level duplex flat. The outline is not the aftereffect of the standard thing 'critical thinking' approach taken in many tasks. The thought fundamental the outline of the building is communicated in a diagrammatic area demonstrating abiding units interlocked one over the other. It is a continuation of thoughts created from perception of past practices in managing the atmosphere. The thoughts utilized as a part of the outline of the building were, perhaps, hatched in the engineer's mind much sooner than he was charged for the venture.

[expatesque]

Referring to your recent post, would love to see some of the fun things you’ve bought! You have the best taste 😊

Aw thank you.

So the main categories of things have been home stuff and fashion stuff. I do have a tag (of course) but haven't posted everything so to summarize...

Home stuff

Living room: The swan table (an icon, a queen, the inspiration for the room), the insane green velvet chair (we love her, gotta keep it eclectic), snake rug (hiss hiss), a fundamentally impractical sofa (Ikea, concessions had to be made somewhere. I'm going to restuff to make it look more fluffy and expensive). I'm keeping my vintage curio cabinet, 1960's referencing 30's circular bar cart, black arched lamp, and big rubber plant. The inspiration is somewhere between this 1930's Thorne miniature room and hummusbird. I need some paintings, a little table for under the window to display a great vase (got this one in ivory, tbc if it's the right size), and some big new throw pillows (I'm thinking dusky pink). Oh also I'm getting a fish to go in the bookcase (I wanted a white Betta but my dad has said that's a bad idea and suggested a gold fish instead).

Kitchen: An oval marble topped cast iron bistro style table. Keeping my black bistro chairs (2x) and will also use 2 of my armless ghost chairs (like these). Likely to get a small floating island to get a little more counter space. Also bought an insane copper kettle ala my man Rajiv recently.

Main bedroom: I've got a new headboard for my bed (this one), I'm getting rid of the wardrobe in there (using the one in the 2nd bedroom) and will replace it with a vintage dressing table and mirror (I do like this one but would rather not spend that given... everything else) to display my great great grandmother's silver mirror, brush, etc. Need some big Euro shams and perpetually looking for a navy woven blanket that's big enough (I want it like, almost duvet sized).

2nd bedroom: Currently is an office / video game room, turning into a proper 2nd bed. I'll use my meh existing bed, need bedside tables, maybe a new desk chair.

Fashion stuff

It's been a lot of big skirts (my love the Prada one, a really full white canvas-y one, this crazy pink one, a beige cashmere Theory one), a set of heavy ribbed tops with high necks in black and browns (for autumn, this is one of them), a few cropped cardigans (can't find any specific ones that I've bought right now, but short enough to wear with the skirts), a totally sheer cream colored top (that is proving surprisingly versatile already), two cheap Zara wrap vests that I'm waiting to arrive (one in cream and one in black, we'll see the quality when they get here), a Victorian gold charm bracelet (+ a charm of a monkey holding a pearl), a pair of really gorgeous silver and mother pearl earrings from the 50s, some rag and bone soft leather mules, some baby blue Mary Janes, and a set of tiny kitten heels that I really like but am not sure I'm keeping (they're a little narrow but I think I could stretch them). I think there's more but if I think too much about it I'll be stressed (rip my budget). Pro tip: Laura Riley has an incredible fashion newsletter that rounds up what's new and what's on sale -- I've gotten almost everything I've bought on 50%+ off.