New York Today: Our Collective Breath

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/nyregion/new-york-today-city-hall-breathing-art.html

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Good morning on this stormy but warming Friday, and welcome to June.

Take a moment and listen.

Do you hear anyone breathing?

Even if you’re currently sharing a bed or squished next to someone on the subway, other people’s breath is not always something we notice. (Unless it stinks.)

But on a recent drizzly morning in City Hall Park, inhaling, exhaling, wheezing, huffing and hissing could be heard, even over the clamor of construction and traffic that swirled around the park.

The amplified sounds of respiration were being pumped through six speakers installed on lampposts by the artist Sari Carel, 43, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Ms. Carel’s art generally explores extinct sounds — she recently dug through archives looking for the calls of vanished animals like the Kauai oo (“a bird with the most beautiful, plaintive song”) and the golden toad (with its “resonant click”), and for recordings of bygone technologies like the phonautograph (the earliest device for recording sound). But for this installation, she captured sounds of life: the breathing of 24 New Yorkers.

“There’s such a variety of breaths; no two are the same,” said Ms. Carel, whose artwork highlights respiratory diseases brought on by poor air quality. “We incorporated a lot of sounds of people who have serious lung illnesses, and you can hear them clearly — they sound very different.”

We listened together.

“That’s C.O.P.D.,” Ms. Carel said, referring to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, when a wheezing sound came over the speakers. “Emphysema,” she said, when we heard what sounded like Darth Vader. (The sounds, she added, were altered and edited.)

To find living, breathing New Yorkers, Ms. Carel asked for volunteers from respiratory wellness support groups, health programs and yoga classes. She had an instructor give a group class on optimal breathing techniques before recording her subjects at Concord Music in Greenwich Village.

“I now notice when people are not exhaling completely,” said Jo Ann Wasserman, 49, of Downtown Brooklyn, who heard about the project in her Pilates class. Ms. Wasserman grew up with asthma and once moved out of New York, in part, to escape the poor air quality.

“We don’t breathe as deeply here,” she said. “In New York you’re always running, and there’s a level of being constricted. There’s no time.”

The project, called “Out of Thin Air,” opens to the public at 10 a.m. in City Hall Park.

The site was chosen, Ms. Carel said, with the help of More Art, a nonprofit that fosters public art, “as a testimony, as a collective breath in front of City Hall.”

“You don’t really think about it unless you’re put under duress for environmental or illness reasons and left gasping for air,” she added. “And that could be all of our experiences if we don’t do something about it.”

Here’s what else is happening:

Take a deep breath.

Exhale.

O.K., now you’re ready for the bad news. The next few days aren’t looking pretty: Expect scattered showers and thunderstorms through Sunday.

At least today and tomorrow are warm — the high is the upper 70s. Things should cool off on Sunday.

• The city would be forced to pay $1 billion under a settlement that would end the yearslong investigation by the Justice Department into the New York City Housing Authority. [New York Times]

• Starting Monday, the city will reserve 285 coveted parking spots exclusively for car-share companies. [New York Times]

• For the second day in a row, both parties in the State Senate failed to reach the necessary 32 votes to pass a bill. [New York Times]

• Revolvers became the standard firearm for city police officers in 1895. Now, the 50 officers who still carry them are reluctantly trading them for mandated semiautomatics. [New York Times]

• Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo embraced the plan to fix the subway — the same day Cynthia Nixon released her own plan to help the system. [New York Times]

• In “About New York,” the columnist Jim Dwyer writes about how Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Nixon are using the struggling subway system as political fodder in the governor’s race. [New York Times]

• A federal judge declared a mistrial in the corruption case of Edward P. Mangano, the former Nassau County executive, after the foreman resigned without explanation. [New York Times]

• A sign advertising a house for sale was swept away during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. This month, it was found washed up on the shores of France. [New York Times]

• A lecturer at Medgar Evers College, part of the CUNY system, pleaded guilty to teaching unauthorized health care classes and issuing bogus course completion certificates. [New York Times]

• The former federal transportation secretary Ray LaHood issued a report detailing the breakdowns in Kennedy Airport’s operations and recommended improvements to prevent a repeat of the chaos caused by a blizzard in January. [New York Times]

• Romana Rafetto, the pasta matriarch who ran the well-known Raffetto’s in Greenwich Village, has died at 85. [New York Times]

• Designs for a new space memorializing those who became sick or died because of their exposure to toxins at ground zero were released Wednesday. [am New York]

• A car crashed into the front of a Brooklyn coffee shop, injuring four people. [Bklyner]

• A Queens attorney pleaded guilty to helping the so-called Taxi King commit fraud by stealing $5 million in M.T.A. taxes. [Sunnyside Post]

• Today’s Metropolitan Diary: “A Night at Studio 54”

• For a global look at what’s happening, see Your Morning Briefing.

• It’s National Doughnut Day: Pick up a free doughnut at various Krispy Kreme (completely free) or Dunkin’ Donuts (free with a drink) locations.

• Summer hours at the High Line start today. 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. [Free]

• Explore the lives of black L.G.B.T. people during the Pride edition of First Fridays at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. 6 p.m. [Free]

• “The Spanish Gardner,” a 10-foot sculpture of Pablo Picasso mowing the lawn, is unveiled at the Columbia Street Waterfront District in Brooklyn. 6 p.m. [Free]

• An outdoor screening of “Black Panther” with a Wakanda fashion show at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. 6 p.m. [Free]

• Watch “The New York Times Close Up,” featuring The Times’s Mara Gay and other guests. Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and Sunday at 12:30 p.m. on CUNY-TV.

• Yankees at Orioles, 7:05 p.m. (YES). Mets host Cubs, 7:10 p.m. (SNY).

• Alternate-side parking remains in effect until June 15.

• Weekend travel hassles: Check subway disruptions and a list of street closings.

Saturday

• The Brooklyn Film Festival screens more than 125 documentary and short films at venues across Brooklyn. Prices and times vary. Through June 10.

• A march to close slaughterhouses in New York, at the main branch of the New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan. 11 a.m. [Free]

• Greenpoint Open Studios, featuring the work of more than 400 artists, at various locations in Brooklyn. Noon to 6 p.m. (and Sunday). [Free]

• Explore the work of Latin American illustrators and photographers at the Camera Club of New York Zine and Photo Book Fair at the Camera Club of New York in Chinatown. Noon to 6 p.m. [Free]

• Yankees at Orioles, 4:05 p.m. (YES). Mets host Cubs, 7:15 p.m. (SNY).

Sunday

• Start your day with morning yoga at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria, Queens. 10 a.m. [Free]

• Learn how to canoe at the Van Cortlandt Golf House in the Bronx. 11 a.m. [Free]

• Take a historical tour of Coney Island beginning at the Parachute Jump near MCU Park in Brooklyn. 1 p.m. [Free]

• An afternoon of jazz at the Voelker Orth Museum in Murray Hill, Queens. 2 p.m. [$12]

• Yankees at Orioles, 1:05 p.m. (YES). Mets host Cubs, 1:10 p.m. (WPIX).

• For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

Now that summer is unofficially here, you may be rifling though our stellar Summer in the City guide for fun things to do this weekend.

We think a trip to the hammocks on Governors Island or the Georgia O’Keeffe show at the New York Botanical Garden are particularly cute ideas.

But here’s another.

OutdoorFest begins today, offering New Yorkers across the five boroughs 40 events that are all — you guessed it — outdoors. Here’s a sampling.

Saturday and Sunday: Camp out on Staten Island with trail runs, survival skill training, fly-fishing lessons, yoga and more. Beginning Saturday at 10 a.m. [$69]

Tuesday: Try stand-up paddleboarding as the sun sets, night fishing, or learn about oyster restoration projects in the city at Pier 84 at Hudson River Park in Midtown Manhattan. Beginning at 6 p.m. [$50] Or paddle the perimeter of Governors Island by kayak. 4 p.m. [$100]

Wednesday: Learn how to mountain bike beginning at Cunningham Park Tennis Courts in Fresh Meadows, Queens. 10:30 a.m. [$35]

Next Friday: Paddle down the Gowanus Canal in a canoe (you read that right) and learn about the history of the neighborhood. 6 p.m. [$50]

Next Saturday: Learn to surf at Rockaway Beach followed by a free yoga class. 10 a.m. [$69]

A list of all OutdoorFest events can be found here.

Have a great weekend!

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