When I got this assignment, I decided take the first page of the map as New York City. For me, New York is now become the biggest exterior space in my life. Cool city, with many cool people, cool lifestyle, cool mind, cool architectures, and cool weather. And I am here.
I started to record my day via my phone last Wednesday. A typical Wednesday.
I go to school by subway and it would always be my first site for everyday includes weekends. Line 4.5.6 have always been crowded; you have really try to get yourself in. Especially in morning, every rush morning, you don’t even have to hold the handles while you are in there. About two years ago, when I first came to New York, the subway shocked me inexpertly, dirty, dark, old, no signal and with bad smell. But now, I live with it and I even forget it took me how long to get used to it. Since subway is a public transportation, it should be exterior space, but I think, while I am in the subway, it more like a interior space to me.
Next would be Union Square. It is a big station with thousands of people everyday. People walk every fast; fast enough to make you feel hesitating to stop and check the signs, because then you would block their way. When surround by people, I feel like I have been pushed; me, myself become smaller. Union Square is the station that I go the most frequent. This is a really live park. Since it is like a circular center, it makes me senses the fast-speed atmosphere of the city, the cars, people, the cloud, the buildings. And I took pictures of the union square market; every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, it would show up in the park. It is an exterior space for sure.
Then I was heading to school. I spent the most of my time in this campus, walking through 12th street to 13th street, then to 16th street. School is a small community, and it gathering people who are from all over the world. Together, we all eat at cafeteria, study at class, library, and lab, smoke downstairs. We carry our heavy bags and walking passes each other. For the most people, I never talk to them, but it looking like we share the same “Parsons” style, and it could be something makes me feel this big group quite internal. The school should be a interior space, including the cafeteria, the dinning hall, the class room and the lab where I go printing; however, if I defined it as a small community, I suppose it could also be an exterior space.
Sometimes I take a taxi to home, when it is too late or I am too tired. The inside of the taxi is an interior space. I remember the first time I took a taxi in NY at one night. I looked through the window and observed this city that I was not familiar with at all. Then I raised a sense of loneliness, which should actually have existed in the deep side of me. Now it is winter, the crazy winter in New York makes me feel tired and missing home easily.
The last sheet, I want to focus on the idea of “private”, so I choose the toilet and my bed.