Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS performance text

SAMUAEL TOPIARY

LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS

Bonsai Emanuel Press Brooklyn, NY

Published October 2010

Bonsai Emanuel Press Brooklyn, NY

© Samuael Topiary 2010 © Julie Wyman 2010

LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS performance text

SAMUAEL TOPIARY

For my mother, who read me Greek myths as bedtime stories, and for my father who taught me to fly.

CONTENTS

LANDSCAPE: A LEGEND introductory essay by Julie Wyman

9

LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS

FALLING •

Icarus

SALT AND PEPPER •

17

Pieter Brueghel

Henry Hudson

33

The Wall Street Minotaur

39

WINDS OF SPECULATION •

BULL MARKET •

ELECTRA •

23

Amelia Earhart

STANDARD ABSTRACTION •

45

David Rockefeller

51

Landscape: A Legend The word legend refers to that useful corner of the map - the definition of terms that lets you understand the map’s codes, its scale, its methods of measurement. In that sense of the word, perhaps this essay can serve as a legend, an aid to guide you as you enter Samuael Topiary’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

But legend also means a story that gets told and retold and retold, a story whose tellings layer up and transform the actual event into something much more significant than whatever really happened.

So start by thinking of Topiary’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus as a kind of legend (a guide for us) to the legends (the metastories) that make up our contemporary landscape.

The six characters in Topiary’s performance piece each have personalities, psychologies, dramatic motivations - but their individual stories have attained the level of legend, of parable: they each point to something broader - further out than the life of the individual. Look around you - throughout history, Topiary is telling us, in order to see where we are at right now.

Landscape as Story / The Story of a Landscape For years now I’ve been watching Samuael Topiary create this work that you’re about to read. From the post 9/11 moment when she got hold of the incredible footage of the World Trade Center being constructed, until now, nearly a decade later, she’s traversed some serious territory – researching out in every direction, like a Henry Hudson whose genius (as she puts it) “eludes the banal boundaries... for a higher purpose... for exploration, for freedom herself.”

The event as legend: Topiary looks at that mind-blowing footage, the WTC’s skyward obliteration of human scale, tiny workers dangling on suspended steel beams miles away from the ground, and she wonders about the other dimension: the horizontal.

Psychology subordinates to context. What is the bigger picture

WYMAN

that these events - this ascent, and eventual descent - are part of?

What is the bigger picture into which these individual characters and historical moments fall into place? What is the whole of which our moment is a part? Hubris, ambition, success, failure: the regularity, the repetition of it all...

It’s not that individual psyches aren’t important, she is telling us.

In fact, the story of the landscape is, of course, a story of different characters coming into play with their moments in history, their places, their contexts. Psychology has its place in the fabric of circumstance. But it’s the bigger picture, the puzzle, that’s important: the mosaic that this collection of minds and wills make up. And with the mosaic, Topiary paints for us a picture of our own situation.

The title, both of Brueghel’s painting and Topiary’s piece, point us not to any single event or person, not to any one part of the canvas, but to what surrounds the event - what spreads out horizontally: the Landscape. We are given a view, an opportunity to see the details of events in various locations of the space, happening concurrently.

When taken as a whole, the landscape, like the map, reveals the relationships between the different areas, as much as it describes what’s happening in each one.

When you watch a series of characters talking, dancing, opining in front of you, it’s tempting to watch only for the narrative thread - a single path with which you can identify, a line that will pull you through. Of course, in Topiary’s Landscape, her characters are explainers; and each has a lot to say. It’s easy to fall into that regular way of watching, identifying. But, try keeping your gaze open, fixed on a wider range. Because these characters’ explanations are the details in this larger landscape - the different parts which make up the whole map.

I think of Topiary the artist as a Rockefeller, conspiring and conniving her way through it all, orchestrating some master plan, some great deal. How can she get another character into the project, how can she explore yet one more dimension? It’s like she’s brokering some kind of omniscient perspective. With the

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LANDSCAPE AS LEGEND

daring of Earhart - taking a risk to do the impossible — publicly.

What gall - to create a landscape out of portraits! But mostly, and most importantly, she is a landscape painter, she is Brueghel standing on the edge of her canvas, looking wide and far into the horizon — seeing not only the emergency in front of her face, but the context in which the emergency occurs.

Landcape with the Fall of Icarus is a piece about context. The title points us toward it: Landcape as opposed to Portrait: the customary orientation when we think about stories of individuals.

Topiary rotates the canvas 90 degrees clockwise from this (toonarrow) “head and shoulders” orientation- to create a performance experience that stretches out wider than the cinematic wide-screen, introducing a parade of people whose real job, rather than taking center stage, is to find their place in an extreme long shot, walking us through the bigger picture. There is a question Topiary is asking here, an experiment in the works: is it possible to use character and story to create a landscape: a form that is, by design, more spacious than story, more inclusive of peripheral vision, and more about a present condition than a typical story’s beginning, middle, or end?

- Julie Wyman .

Berkeley, CA

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Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is the title of a painting by Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder, completed in 1558, two years after the Spanish Empire declared bankruptcy on its creditors in Antwerp.

Henry Hudson was an English explorer, hired by a Dutch company to find a northwest route to the Orient. Hudson ‘discovered’ the river which bears his name and claimed Dutch ownership for the territory known as New Netherlands (from New York City up to present day Albany) in September, 1609.

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Earhart was declared missing on July 2, 1937. Her plane disappeared somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean while attempting to complete the final leg of an around the world flight.

David Rockefeller, Sr. (born 1915) is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller Jr and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and the only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon and Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, Sr. In 1958, Rockefeller spearheaded the DowntownLower Manhattan Development Association and authored a plan to revitalize Lower Manhattan and build a complex dedicated to world trade.

LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS

performance text

FALLING

Icarus

ICARUS

You know, I didn’t go that high at first.

I mean, I couldn’t...

I didn’t know how.

Gravity was like this drag on my center and I would hover, but I couldn’t figure it out... how to get really up and off the ground.

And my father was way out in front... totally oblivious to me, as usual....

I mean, I dunno, maybe he was just giving me space, to figure it out -but I was a little worried, you know because he told me not to stay too low and I was trying to catch up to him.

And, then, it happened -- it just happened.

I opened my wings a little wider, I caught some wind, and I took off, fast....

It was like NOTHING I’ve ever experienced.

I was sweeping and swirling in the air, I was in-fuckingtoxicated, you know, by the sheer amazing craziness of it.

The labyrinth is way down below and I'm gaining on my father, who is still ahead.... but, closer now...

And, all of a sudden, I realize...

I’m FLYING!

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FALLING

It’s amazing..... the rush of the air, the wind, the clouds streaking past my face....

I, can’t, catch, my breath.

And then I just blow past him. So fast, I can’t hardly stop... straight up into the air.... farther and farther....

I’m climbing towards the warmth, the fuzzy yellow warm glow of GOD! It’s SOOO bright -- all that love and energy.

It’s a magnet -------- pulling me towards its fire, its enormity.

I am mesmerized by its flickering orange tongues the feathers of its heat its lust its hunger for me....

A gigantic pulsing thunder of hot flesh reaching for me, the excruciating white heat of is fingers grabbing at me...

I was choking and flapping my wings, trying to pull away and then I understood what my father meant about my wax melting.

I was dripping.... sticky liquid had devoured my beautiful wings, my feathers singed and charred ------and at that moment I understood my father’s genius, his architecture I knew what the clouds know: that I will be swallowed by it.

I lay back into the air, and let the full power of my love wash over me. I no longer hated him. I no longer hated what my father had done to us. I just loved him for this rush toward everything yes, Papa, yes I will be your martyr, your freedom fighter... I accept this final act of rebellion against all the Gods of nature and inescapable laws -- because height is the ultimate escape.

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ICARUS

The sun shines into my eyes and I stare back so that all of time compresses itself into one giant black hole -- it’s so bright, that blind spot.....

And I am falling, falling, falling into endless blue green tides washing over me, and into me, and crushing me with all the force that our earth slams into all the poor small creatures tossing in sand. i am starfish, i am seaweed, i am under and over, and around and around

i am nothing i am memory

i am here.

22

SALT AND PEPPER

Pieter Brueghel

PIETER BRUEGHEL

(Brueghel enters through the audience. He speaks with a thick Flemish accent and speaks directly to various individuals in the audience.)

Oh, look, what a beautiful profile you have.... And you.... such natural beauty! (etc., improvises) OK, so, I have a joke for you....

There’s this painter who paints pictures of really beautiful children. And so one day, a patron comes over to his studio.

And the man looks at all his paintings and then he says to the painter, “Mr. Painter, why is that in your paintings the children are so beautiful but in real life, your own children they are so ugly?” And the painter thinks about this, and then he says: “Well, one I make in the day, the other I make at night!” Ha, ha, ha! (chuckles).

(Painting is projected onto wall:)

So, here is... my “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” And.... you know, people they ask me, what does this painting mean?

So, what I like to tell you is that, this painting, it’s about this moment, right now.... the moment at which the sun, it’s just beginning to set... ja? And suddenly, we sense, we are about to lose the light...

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SALT AND PEPPER

Of course, this is the moment when the real painting happens... You know, when you are in the tension between what is yet before you and what has already disappeared -- the struggle between what you see and what you imagine... ja?

And, then suddenly, it is finished, and I have to clean my brushes and close the linseed oil.

And, sometimes, I am even climbing down the hillside in the dark... Because, you see, I too, am in a race with the sun... ha, ha!

But, up here, I have the whole landscape.

I am the perspective of Daedalus, inventor of flight, flying overhead... and I can see all of Flanders before me... the whole picture... the simple prosperity, the coming and goings of the country...

Now, will I be heartbroken when I let myself to realize that that tiny splash -- is that what I heard?; that tiny spec in the water, that is you, Icarus -- my only son... Because, from all the way up here, all he sees is a universe of indifference.

You know, Erasmus, the great Flemish humanist, says that Icarus’ fall... it’s inevitable, the fate of reaching for heights what are... unsustainable... Kind of like that Spanish Empire of ours... No? That his fall, this is a result of flying too high, a

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PIETER BRUEGHEL

punishment for too much ambition... Ah! Listen....Can you hear that?... Woosh..... woosh....... woosh.......! The sounds of the blades of the windmollen... wooshing through the wind...

I love that sound... the sound of human invention at work -engineering the wind to pump the sea out of the marsh. What give us our famous, fertile lands, ja? Because we here in the low countries, we have the richest, most fertile land in of all of Europe... ja! Because of this windmoellen, this technology, this ambition....

OK, so... here, we have the plough-man, ploughing his fertile Flemish fields...

... and down in that valley, you can almost hear the lowing of the sheep... grazing there, totally oblivious to what the shepherd and his dog are looking at -- up in the sky -- they are seeing something amazing.... is it a man flying overhead? Do they see Daedalus there in the sky?....

And then... way down at the water’s edge, you can see the fisherman casting his last rod of the day, hoping he gonna catch just one more fish... ja?

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SALT AND PEPPER

I need this perspective... I need to be up here to be reminded that we are as complete and as whole as we’ve ever been....

From up here, I cannot see any merchants crying about this bankruptcy and how they are being ruined by our Spanish overlords.... From this high vantage, I cannot feel the fear of Antwerpen....

You know how many patrons I have say to me... ‘Oh, Mr. Brueghel, I lent all my geld to the crown and they owe me this and that interest and now, and how will we go on... the whole city it’s ruined!‘ ... ‘Oh, Mr. Brueghel, I know I promised I gonna buy your new painting, but now, I cannot even buy a new hat!‘ So many spice merchants in their silk shirts, sneezing away their pepper...

But, look out at that port..

. There are still ships arriving into harbor of Antwerpen, and you know their hulls are full of this... silver from those new world... And, we know that the stock market don’t close for no bankrupt King or another...

Look, I am just a simple painter from a small town.

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PIETER BRUEGHEL

What do I know about the finances of the richest city in all of Europe? I just paint the picture what I see:

‘The Tower of Babel.’ (This is also my painting.)

This is Antwerpen! A city of so many languages --- here we have Venetians, and Ragusians and Turks and Bohemians and Persians and Prussians -- the lords of so many lands flooding our city, begging for loans to fund another expedition, one more ship...

But then Spain saunters in with her soldiers and her henchmen, and says ‘give us the money for our Inquisitions so that we keep all that silver and gold flowing into the markets for you...‘ Ja! It’s not that complicated... All these foreigners, clutching their big fur hats... selling us pepper and these other fancy spices what take out the taste of salt from our salted meats...

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SALT AND PEPPER

These spice merchants, they make so much money... and then they turn around and lend their fortunes to all the crowns of Europe... not just to Spain, but to England, to France, to Portugual... they don’t care who they lend to.... they care only for what their money gonna buy for their own sake, ja?

Ja! Because men outside their own country have allegiance to themselves alone.

Look, I like my pepper just as much as anyone.... but I see how our taste for spice smells like gunpowder...

And what about this Phillip II, our young Spanish emperor, who has just inherited so many territories all over Europe, in addition to all those far away colonies in the Americas.... such a large and unwieldy empire and with such inconceivably large debts... Did we really believe that our Emperor can fly so high?

Of course, as a Catholic and a loyal Spanish subject, I humbly submit to the beneficent authority of his Royal Highness, the

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PIETER BRUEGHEL

Holy Roman Emperor chosen by God.... You know, Erasmus once said, ‘we all have our part to play in the great theater of the cosmos.’

And, certainly, I know my role: ‘Eh, Peasant Brueghel, make us another funny picture... entertain us, Mr. Brueghel... paint us another silly painting!‘ So, for you, merchants of Antwerpen... you who are crying over this terrible moment of economic crisis... I say to you: this moment, she is just a tiny detail in the vast sea of all our human folly, hmm?!?

But, you know, I’m thinking about those ships... the way those ships that don’t stop in the wake of misfortune and bankruptcy.

And, I wonder... what do those ships mean for us... ... for our beloved Antwerpen, center of so much culture and learning, and for our shining, golden age... now that... our Icarus has fallen....?

32

SALT AND PEPPER

As I said to you before: for me, this moment... it’s about the light. And, I feel a great nostalgia for that light, setting now out there at the horizon.... that line what cuts between the sky and the sea...

And, when I look out at that line, I know, that when you follow it far enough.... that line becomes a globe.

33

THE WINDS OF SPECULATION

Henry Hudson

HENRY HUDSON

Announcer: In April, 1609, an English explorer is hired by the United East India Company, a Dutch conglomerate of merchants and investors. Accompanied by his young son and a small crew, he sails westward from the Port of Amsterdam on a ship called the Half Moon. Charged with finding a faster route to the riches of the orient, the journey is long and arduous, across a punishing sea.

song: My son, what are we to make of the stars / which lead us in such precarious lines?

We’re men of science. / We can’t afford to be overly concerned / with the consequences of our actions. / If it were so / we should never gather enough courage / to reach our / destiny.

What greater reason / could there be for our endeavors / than the promise / that we make to uncover / the western route to the riches of the orient.

We, Hudsons, are like the wind.

Our genius eludes / the banal boundaries / of country, or the petty / allegiances to one empire / or another.

We sail for a higher purpose than one King / or one company.

We sail for exploration / for Freedom, herself!

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THE WINDS OF SPECULATION

sock puppets: Son:

Papa....?

Hudson:

What!?!

Son:

Are we there yet?

Hudson:

I told you, stop bothering me!

I’m busy charting!

Son:

But, Papa, I think I see land...?

Hudson: Don’t be ridiculous! My charts say least fortnight from Cathay....

Son:

we’re at

But, Papa, look! Over there....

Announcer: On September 2, 1609, they steer their 80 ton ship off the surging currents of the North Atlantic and into an immense, sheltered bay. Sailing to the mouth of the mile wide river that flowed into it from the north, against the wishes of his mutinous crew and starving young son, he pushes a 100 miles upstream hoping it leads to China. It doesn’t. But though he fails to find the northwest passage, Henry Hudson has stumbled upon something even better, one of the biggest and best natural harbors in the world. song: People talk, about about the indifference of the universe. But, we suffer the indifference of the map.

Our strength, our certainty comes in knowing that no one owns the wind, no one owns the wind, no one owns the wind!

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HENRY HUDSON

sock puppets: Son:

Papa.... I’m so cold and hungry on this little rowboat....

Hudson:

Buck up, Son! We are explorers!

We are Hudsons!

Son:

But what about our crew.... are they ever coming back for us? And what about our Dutch investors?

Hudson:

Fuck the Dutch! We will not stop, we will never stop until we reach Cathay!

song: And so.... even as we are swallowed in this ice and cruel cold still / we must cling to the / widest of river / mouthes / knowing as we know / it’s the most impossible inlet which will be our / backdoor to heaven.

And remember / son, not even death can take away the certainty of / our impending discovery, and our belief that the future / will write our name / in her indelible ink.

We, Hudsons, are like the wind.

Our genius eludes / the banal boundaries / of country, or the petty / allegiances to one empire / or another.

We sail for a higher purpose than one King / or one company.

We sail for exploration / for Freedom, herself!

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BULL MARKET

The Wall Street Minotaur

WALL STREET MINOTAUR

No one knows this maze better than I.... pent inside the walls of these too tall buildings, hemming me in.

When you walk down my cobblestones, think of Spain -- the way they let their bulls run free through all their old, narrow, crowded streets. Then you’ll understand what it means for every man to be for himself. You will worship the power of the blood, the sport, and you’ll wave that red flag while you pray I won’t knock you down....

But, you know, before I was a bull, I was just a neighborhood, a running wall of blinking, streaming lights, a ticker-tape of letters and numbers. Yeah, before I was the voice of money, a newspaper and an international symbol, a concept and a construct, before I was all that, I was just a simple street. And, before I was a street, I was a wooden fence... built by a few African slaves, following orders from their Dutch overlord.

Ya’ know that joke about 60 guilders or 24 dollars... You don’t know that joke -- about the price of Manhattan island being the best deal in real estate history? Yeah... Who are we kidding? We know that guns are the only way to convince the natives that land is something which can be owned.

Imagine... back then, I was just a rickety picket fence, the northern boundary of a camp, a land grab, a fledgeling colony owned by some rinky dink corporation. Yeah, before I was a street... I was The Wall... protection -- blockin’ out the

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BULL MARKET

wilderness, keeping the danger at bay. It’s funny how, even back then, I was protecting the invaders from invasion. Like, the English will tell you I was built to keep out the Indians, but the Dutch will say they built me to keep out the very English who knocked me down.

And, ya’ know.... The failure of New Amsterdam will always be the triumph of New York.

I am a river which cannot be dammed... and believe me, thousands of beavers have tried!

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WALL STREET MINOTAUR

Their furs, which made me rich, have long been replaced by suits and ties. I have always hedged my bets, borrowed against the future, and speculated with interest.

The condition of my market, it’s like the weather: there will always be storms.

The wall protects, and the wall pretends.

Does it matter to a street, that once it was a wall?

Once there was a big old tree... in the very place where the Stock Exchange now stands.

Its canopy of leaves was an umbrella under which the traders of so many nations gathered to make their deals.

That big square building replaced the dappled shade, and now, inside, there grows a forest of ticket tape.

Yeah...! The branches of your government spread out from them same tangled roots.

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BULL MARKET

Why, right across the square -- Federal Hall, the very steps where George Washington took his oath of office.

All your founding fathers stood there, tallying the bill they charge for human rights. This is democracy, they said, anyone can pay to play.....

Today, I got security guards to keep the rif raf off my historic cobble stone. But, who needs an office when your lobby is as big as mine? Ha! Private deals take place in all kinds of halls, the federal as well as, those of then Empire state.

So, come, walk down my street.

Let me sell you another tower, only, this one will be higher than before, so I can watch you jump in the season of my fall.

The tall trees of commerce cast their shadows onto maiden and pearl, blotting out the light for all who the little men who walk beneath.

But still, the island where I live is a magnet for the world.

Read the smoke signals of my billowing pyres of cash...

I keep them burning through the night!

45

ELECTRA

Amelia Earhart

AMELIA EARHART

Hello, America!

It’s me, Amelia, your princess of the skies.

I’ve come all the way to this glittering emerald city...

I’ve always been drawn to the liquid...

Maybe it was growing up in Kansas, where everything was so dull and dry.

All that dusty wind whipping it’s cloak of frontier depression around our shoulders.

It made us restless, my father and I. So, yes, of course, we drank... tall glasses of “anywhere but here,” neat, no rocks.

I’ve always gotten my wings from men like my father, vicarious men, producers, financiers... men who like to look up at me from the safety of the ground.

And, I’ve always loved a man I could leave in the dust....

You know, I never intended to get married.

But, GP Putnam, my husband, the great spin master of Madison Avenue.

He was such brilliant architect of desire...

And GP needed me because he knew that a woman who can fly a plane is a woman who can sell anything.

So, turn on those electric lights, ladies!

There’s a modern world full of refrigerators and automobiles and telephones.

America believes in technology.

We believe that tomorrow will always better than today.

We lay my heart at the altar of Progress, We worship the Gods of science.

And we believe that fear should never deter our freedom!

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ELECTRA

I held onto that thread as long as I could, while GP spun and spun and spun.

I was an aviatrix. The future.

Proof that a woman is the equal to a man.

It’s all in the name of Madison Avenue, right, GP? Say what you will to get the funds, the ends always justify the means.... after all, an American woman can fly across the world!

For years, I played my role perfectly.

I never questioned our motives, or the aching heart which beats the drums of progress I never questioned any of it, until this year of horrors unleashed from the skies...

1937! First there was Guernica -- the full scale decimation of that entire city from bombardment... and there was that terrible Nazi blimp exploding over New Jersey...

I can’t rightly say at which moment exactly I came to notice my conscience had been singed -the molecules in my mind shifting just ever so slightly for me to see the terror, to hear the screams and cries...

Look! The agents of death are hurtling through the floor of my beloved machine.

But now, there is no apology strong enough, no excuse wide enough, which will hold my wings aloft.

And that’s when I began to think about the mythology of human flight itself. Did you know that, before Daedalus invented flight, before he and Icarus were imprisoned in that inescapable labyrinth, before the feathers and wax —did you

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AMELIA EARHART

know that Daedalus had been brought to Crete for the sole purpose of engineering a way for the Queen to fuck a bull?

It was Daedalus, the famous Athenian architect, who figured out a way to fulfill this Queen’s perverse obsession, her bestiality.

And of course, Daedalus was much too engaged in solving such complex engineering problem to stop and consider the consequences of such a genetic experiment...

So, you see.... it is the inventor of human flight who gives us the minotaur!

And we know the way a weapon becomes its nation’s greatest wealth... that way that power is defined by the ability to do the most harm.

50

ELECTRA

Once upon a time, I was Progress herself, But, my disappearance will prove it’s still a man’s world!

Just look at all those giant buildings out there on the skyline....

Just like giant pens, signing the name of their companies on the horizon.... All those towers of glass and steel, they are just like me, giant advertisements to light up the night sky.

Oh, I know that I’ll be way more famous for my failure, than I ever could be for my success.

But, I will no longer pretend that flying is not an effrontery to nature, to birds, to the sky herself!

My choice to accept the liquid that has always drawn me to her wake, this is my one true rebellion, my resistance to destruction.

And only in disappearing my illusion, can I offer you my....

N A A A A A A M M M M E!

51

STANDARD ABSTRACTION

David Rockefeller

DAVID ROCKEFELLER

Good evening.

It’s nice to see so many familiar faces here tonight.

I’ve been thinking a lot about abstraction lately...

The dictionary defines abstraction as the act of removing something, of separating an inherent quality from its physicality. For instance, when we experience great heights, such as being on a high floor of a skyscraper, or flying in an airplane, and we’re separated from the ground... the landscape looks like an abstract painting, an ever changing stream of shapes and colors and lines.

As many of you know, my Mother founded the Museum of Modern Art here in New York. And as a great admirer of modern art, Mother taught me how to appreciate abstraction, to embrace the new, modern vision of our culture.

But, it was my Grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Sr, who first taught me about perspective, about the importance of taking the long-view.

As you know, Grandfather founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 and within ten years, Standard was the oil industry in the United States.

Standard made Grandfather rich, possibly “the richest man in America.”

But, he was also, for much of his life, one of the most hated. You see, Standard was a monopoly. At its height, it controlled 90% of the world’s oil

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STANDARD ABSTRACTION

and was trying hard to buy up the last 10%. But despite all those attacks from both the press and the government, Grandfather never wavered in his belief that Standard’s monopoly was beneficial, not just for owners and workers in the industry, but for consumers and the country as a whole.

Kerosene became universally available, and Standard’s product was cheaper and better.

This ability to see into the future, to organize and plan on the largest scale, was a value that Grandfather taught to my Father.

Throughout my childhood in New York City, Father had a hand in building everything, from parks to churches to museums and even affordable housing for the poor... And, of course, Rockefeller Center, as you know, has had a lasting impact on urban design throughout the world.

You see, my parents raised me with a great appreciation of the way that art and architecture help us to define who we are and what our culture represents. Father deeply believed that a civilized society will be judged largely by the creative activities of its citizens. And throughout history, it’s the bankers and businessmen, from the Medici to the Mellons, who have been enthusiastic patrons of the arts.

Which brings me to our situation today. Mainly through the impetus provided by our business corporations, we here in the United States have achieved a material abundance and a growing leisure unprecedented in history. And yet, among our own people and those I talk with from other nations, there is insistent questioning about the significance of our material advances. What does it matter, they ask, that America has the largest GNP or the biggest atom smasher or the fanciest automobiles? Are these the only hallmarks of a truly Great Society?

55

DAVID ROCKEFELLER

Almost imperceptibly over the past several years, the modern corporation has evolved into a social as well as an economic institution. Without losing site of the need to make a profit, it has developed ideals and responsibilities going far beyond the profit motive. It has become, in effect, a full-fledged citizen, not only of the community in which it is headquartered, but of the country and indeed the world.

As the President of Chase Bank, I see a great opportunity to contribute to our culture here in New York City. We are eager to enhance the Wall Street area, humanize the image of our business, and provide relief and refreshment for both the eye and the spirit.

What I propose is an exercise in ‘catalytic bigness.’ Capitalizing on lower Manhattan’s historic role as the hub of international commerce, the plan will create a center for world trade, designed to lead the way for American companies to transcend national boundaries and operate globally.

56

STANDARD ABSTRACTION

Think of it as a kind of Catholic Church of capitalism.

Designed by world-renowned architect Minarou Yamasaki, our trade center will provide 10 million square feet of office space.

And, tonight, I am happy to announce that the Governor of New York — my brother Nelson — has just committed New York State to become our project’s largest tenant, leasing 1 million square feet of the space.

Now, I know that some of you are calling our twin towers project David and Nelson... But, I believe it is the concept of the buildings, their ‘twin-ness’ that is the most ingenious aspect of the design for the world’s tallest buildings.

To return to the point at which I began this talk: abstraction.

Of all the forms of art, architecture is perhaps culture’s grandest form of abstraction. Architecture provides an opportunity to use the definition of space to evoke emotional response. Architecture can transcend the particularities of its time and place, and transport us into a realm beyond our physical limits...

57

DAVID ROCKEFELLER

Think of an equal sign, turned on its side.... soaring vertically.

Think of those thick double bars on a musical score, those double bars that let you know, this the end of the composition.

This is it, it’s finished.

There is one global superpower...

It is us.

The Twin Towers abolish competition from the skyline.

58

The words and ideas in “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” have been inspired by interviews and discussions with Eric Darton and Eileen Myles, and collaborations with Miguel Gutierrez, Ryder Cooley, Peter Kerlin and Sara Seinberg. Other influences include texts written by W.H. Auden, Erasmus, Walter S. Gibson, J.S. Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Russell Shorto, David Rockefeller, Simon Schama and by films and documentaries about Henry Hudson, Amelia Earhart, and the Rockefellers. Invaluable feedback, assistance, encouragement and support has been provided by Liz Rubin, Julie Wyman, Ilse Pfeifer, Terri Dewhirst, Zoey Kroll, EE Miller, Page McBee, Tamara Llosa-Sanders, Charles Gute, Melissa Dunn, Paul Rowley and Barbara Landberg.

Editorial support for this book was provided by Julie Regan.

Images by Pieter Brughel include details from the following paintings and drawings: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1558), Gula (Gluttony) (1558), Tower of Babel (Vienna) (1563), Big Fish Eat Little Fish (1556), Massacre of the Innocents (c. 1564?), Armed Three-Master with Daedalus and Icarus in the Sky (c.

1561-62). Other images include: photographs and video stills by Samuael Topiary, the Merrill Lynch corporate logo, found imagery and graphics scanned from thrift store books, and stills from the 16mm film “Building the World Trade Center” produced by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

photo by Paul Rowley

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus had its world-premiere run at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City from November 11-20, 2010. It was directed

by Miguel Gutierrez, with sound design and video collaboration by Peter Kerlin and live music by C. Ryder Cooley.

Sets were designed by Andrea Stanely, with costumes by Jocelyn Davis and lighting by Carrie Wood.

Work-in-progress presentations over the past number of years have been presented at Bard College in Annandale, NY, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT; in New York City at Dixon Place and Dance Theater Workshop; in Brooklyn, NY at the Center for Performance Research; and in San Francisco at the Radar Reading Series, the National Queer Arts Festival and the Climate Theater.

Thank you to Jay Wegman, Ben Pryor, Adrian SaldaĂąa, Jon Moniaci, ElĂŠonore Dubulluit-Dyl, David Averbach, Michelle Tea, Beth Pickens, Radar and my fellow Radar Lab Rats, the Experimental Television Center, the MacDowell Colony, Maya Ciarrocchi and the DTW Media Arts Fellowship program, Mount Tremper Arts, CPR, Monique Jenkinson, Jessica Heidt and the Climate Theater, Liz Rubin, Paul Rowley, Brad Hampton and Anna Sperber.

“What a beautiful project - a collaboration of words and images that result in a dreamstate meditation on ambition and tragedy.”

- Michelle Tea “An antidote to the shouting overload of the cultural moment.

Topiary illuminates our precarious present through a meeting of history and imagination.”

- Tamara Llosa-Sandor “Topiary’s gorgeous and unsettling multimedia performance investigates and re-imagines myth and history to arrive at a moving and wise conclusion about the problematic beauty of freedom. “ - Page McBee

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a solo performance that explores our human compulsion to tempt fate and reach beyond our physical limits. Using the Greek myth of Icarus as an allegory, the piece centers on New York City’s symbolic role as financial capitol in the endless quest for globalism.

Writer/Performer Samuael Topiary takes the audience on a journey from 16th century Antwerp through 20th century Lower Manhattan, impersonating six imaginary, mythological characters: Pieter Brueghel, Henry Hudson, the Wall Street Minotaur, Amelia Earhart, David Rockefeller and Icarus.

Bonsai Emmanuel Press

2010

SAMUAEL TOPIARY

This book is comprised of the text of the six monologues from the performance piece “Landscape with the Fall o f Icarus,” and also includes an introductory essay by filmmaker Julie Wyman and “Icarus,” an excerpt of a novel-in-progress by Sara Seinberg, which was first written as part of an earlier version of the piece.

LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS

“This is a smart, one-of-a-kind show that combines aesthetically beautiful imagery, astute observation, and Topiary’s unique perspective...”

- SF Weekly.com