The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, February 13, 2015 — 5
Infra Eco Logi
spans disciplines
Taubman installation
explores renewable
energy
By KATHLEEN DAVIS
Senior Arts Editor
Niched in downtown Ann
Arbor, past the hustle and
activity
of
Main
Street,
lies
the
Taubman
College Liberty
Research
Annex,
an
impressive
work
and
exhibition
space owned by
the University.
Infra Eco Logi
Urbanism,
the current installation in the
space, is a multi-year research
project-turned-publication-
turned-traveling exhibit that
highlights a proposal to unite
the Great Lakes region in terms
of infrastructure and energy
resources.
The project was created by
research-based
architecture
studio RVTR, founded by Kathy
Velikov, an assistant professor
at the University, and Geoffrey
Thün, an associate professor,
who both work at the Taubman
College of Architecture and
Urban Planning. RVTR has
locations in both Ann Arbor
and Toronto, but the team is
currently working locally to
accommodate with the exhibit
space.
Infra Eco Logi Urbanism’s
research spans over multiple
disciplines,
including
urbanism, ecology and policy.
The project is an exploration
of the future of megaregions,
defined as networks of cities
and the sprawl between them,
interconnected by topography
and environmental systems.
The exhibit itself is composed
of several suspended screens,
each featuring a different facet
of the design process. The color
scheme of black, white and
fluorescent yellow is simple yet
striking, bringing attention to
the research more thoroughly
than one could interpret just
from the research manuscript.
Velikov notes that the Great
Lakes region, one of the most
diffuse megaregions identified
as
the
sprawl
between
Toronto, Chicago and Detroit,
is rich in the promise of
renewable energy, thanks to an
abundance of water and wind
provided by the lakes. Infra
Eco Logi Urbanism explores
how
renewable
resources
could benefit the surrounding
regions. The project focuses on
the Great Lakes megaregion,
and
analyzes
its
potential
based on a hypothetical United
Nations-style
agreement
between the neighboring areas
of Michigan and Canada.
“Questions
arise
like,
who is responsible for the
algae in Toledo? Things like
that change how we think
about
cooperation,
politics
and
ecology
regionally,”
Velikov said. “Our research
is, essentially, how can design
approach this question?”
RVTR believes the creation
of
an
area
of
suspended
nationality between Canada
and the United States would
help solve these complicated
issues of policy between the
megaregion. Part of Infra Eco
Logi Urbanism’s research was
anticipating
policy
changes
in
a
time
of
energy
and
technological changes.
“A
big
moment
for
us
was
when
we
decided
to
incorporate the politics and
policy, and how that would
effect
things.
It’s
still
a
question that we keep working
out,” Velikov said. “What is the
relationship between design
and politics and policy, that’s
a really important challenge
for us. We can conceptualize
the new technologies, that’s
almost the easier part, but
reconceptualizing
political
situations
and
how
that
materializes
becomes
one
of
the
more
challenging
questions of design and design
exploration.”
What sets Infra Eco Logi
Urbanism apart from many
other urban planning designs
is the focus on the places
outside
the
city
that
are
still heavily impacted by the
metropolitan, rather than the
cities themselves. These areas,
Velikov
notes,
are
equally
important
to
tackle
when
discussing the urban sprawl.
The process of beginning the
exhibit began with analyzing
these regions, which involved
looking at urban systems as
networks. The project involves
a host of mapping, a visual
resource for visitors to envision
what
these
megaregions
look like and how they’re
connected. One of the main
issues of interconnectedness
RVTR tackles is the issue
of current highways, which
Velikov and her team feel very
strongly against.
“The highway is a terrible
waste of urban space, it leaves
these ‘orphan lands’ and leaves
all these vast territories empty
and useless,” Velikov said. “If
we were looking at it as a space
where we could have more
modes of mobility, more places
where, say, electric vehicles
could
refuel,
these
spaces
could become something more
for the region as a site for new
institutions
and
resources,
and could do more for the
populations
that
live
out
there.”
Taking into consideration
how
transportation
and
energy will change in coming
years, a bulk of Infra Eco
Logi
Urbanism
is
focused
on
retooling
intraregional
highways
to
accommodate
ecologically friendly modes of
transportation, for example a
wind-powered high-speed rail
proposed by the project.
Though
inching
into
the
utopian, Infra Eco Logi Urbanism
does a fantastic analysis into how
renewable energy development
will change the landscape of
urban spaces, and has opened a
fascinating discussion.
“What we’ve hoped that the
exhibition would do is to open
people up to these questions,”
Velikov said. “When you put
forth a speculative proposal,
the goal is to allow people to
imagine
something
different
and something that might be
possible. For us, that’s a really
important aspect of this kind of
work. It’s not to say this position
itself as a singular solution, but
it’s meant to foster discourse
and debate.”
By AMELIA ZAK
Daily Music Editor
The
Academy
Award
for
Best Original Song is presented
annually to songwriters who
have written and composed
an original piece for a film.
This year’s awards ceremony
contains
an
especially
interesting
array
of
talent.
Ranging from a surprising Rita
Ora ballad to Glen Campbell’s
heart-wrenching
“I’m
Not
Gonna Miss You” to Tegan
and Sara’s adorably aggressive
“Everything is AWESOME!!!”
featuring the silly Lonely Island
boys,
the
nominations
are
seemingly sporadic with a few
possible winners. But who truly
deserves the golden man? And
who is the likely victor? Let’s
break it down:
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You,”
written by Glen Campbell
and Julian Raymond
The
highly
celebrated
country
singer
and
former
television host Glen Campbell
captured his final tour this
past year in the documentary,
“Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.”
The nominated song describes
Campbell’s
last
optimistic
and conscious thoughts as he
has begun to lose his mind to
Alzheimer’s disease. “I’m Not
Gonna Miss You” speaks to his
wife, “the last person I will
love,” and the unique last selfish
act the disease provides him,
because at least “I’m not gonna
miss you.” As the relatively
simple
music
protects
the
purity and importance of the
song’s message, “I’m Not Gonna
Miss You” is working to remove
the negative, misunderstood
stigma of the disease. While not
the first pick of many for the
Oscar, this song fully deserves
the attention provided by the
nomination.
“Grateful,” performed
by Rita Ora and written by
Diane Warren
For Diane Warren, victory is
an impassable road. This famed
songwriter, having penned hits
for J-Lo, Bon Jovi, Whitney
Houston and the like, has hit
her seventh Academy Award
nomination with her addition
to the “Beyond the Lights”
soundtrack, “Grateful.” It was
surely
Warren’s
acclaimed
name and noted songwriting
talents that allowed such a
relatively
uncelebrated
and
unimpressive pop song slip
into the nominations. Nothing
about this song is new or
groundbreaking
enough
to
be recognized as the best of
its kind for the year 2014. If
possible, could someone even
scratch out the song title, plead
forgiveness from Ms. Warren
and add Lorde’s “Yellow Flicker
Beat” from “The Hunger Games:
Mockingjay” soundtrack?
“Everything is
AWESOME!!!,” performed
by Tegan and Sara featuring
Lonely Island and written by
Shawn Patterson
Here’s another song that may
not be a top pick to represent the
music of the movies we enjoyed
in the year 2014. Maybe it is for
those who drank a Red Bull and
chased it down with an entire
box of Nerds, but otherwise
the stimulation that this song
provides is far too aggressive
and, at times, frightening. Andy
Samberg, the former Saturday
Night Live stud and Lonely
Island
founder,
spurts
out
random gibberish in between
the recurring “Everything is
AWESOME!!!”
declaration
of
the
chorus
with
comments
like, “I feel like an awesome
possum.” Comparing oneself to
extraordinary mammals? I guess
that’s relatable for the viewers
of a cartoon film. Should it win?
No. Could it win? Yes. Would it
be incredibly amusing to see it
take home the little golden man?
Absolutely.
“Lost Stars,” performed by
Adam Levine and written by
Danielle Brisebois and Gregg
Alexander
John Carney took his time
in completing another musical
drama. Following the 2007 hit and
“Best Original Song” Academy
Award win from his Irish film
“Once,” high expectations were
left for Carney’s most recent
project. “Begin Again” was a
subtle
recreation
of
Carney’s
well-conceived
personal
film
landscape to create a movie where
the storyline is fueled by the love
or creation of music. “Lost Stars,”
in its performance by pop star
Adam Levine, exists as the musical
and cinematic crescendo of this
simple film. Yet its lyricism is at
times awkward, i.e. “Yesterday I
saw a lion kiss a deer / Turn the
page, maybe we’ll find a brand new
ending / where we’re dancing in
our tears. ” This is concurrently
too empty and too full. The
songwriters, Gregg Alexander and
Danielle Briesbois, are reflected
in the growth of this four and a
half minute song. Insertions like
the climatic yelps of the Levine’s
recognizably high-pitched vocals
reflect the sonic inspiration two
former members of The New
Radicals can only provide. While
the lyrics remain convoluted at
parts, and though the popularity
of the movie never mounted that of
Carney’s previous work in “Once,”
“Lost Stars” is another respectable
option for the Academy this year.
“Glory,” written and
performed by John Legend and
Common
Legend and Common’s R&B
and slow jam rap creation rings
up as not only the strongest
contender
for
the
Academy’s
award, but the most likely and
predicted winner. Their song,
“Glory,” maintains a collaboration
of current social emphasis and
talented musicianship that should
act as the proud musical marker
of the Academy for the year 2014.
While the musical dexterity of
“Glory” is relatively limited, the
lyrics and vocal emphasis that the
distinct voices of John Legend and
Common provide convey a level of
fervor that was surely present at
the Selma to Montgomery voting
rights marches of 1965, and even
more recently on the streets of
Ferguson, Missouri.
EVENT PREVIEW
Infra
Eco Logi
Urbanism
Until Feb. 22
Taubman
College Liberty
Research Annex
Free
FILM COLUMN
AKSHAY
SETH
M
arion Cotillard cries.
She bends over, she
presses her hands
on her knees, she tilts her head
down and
she patiently
awaits the
shudders,
which come
in quick
spasms like
an alcoholic’s
post-Denny’s
nausea. She
vomits emo-
tion. She
wraps her
arms around
her shoulders to cradle each
tremor. She teeters through
every gulp of air. She weeps into
a pillow. She gazes forlornly out
of windows. She forlornly gazes
the shit out of windows. She
melts those goddamned win-
dows. Then, a few scenes later,
she cries some more.
And we’re still transfixed.
Watching Marion Cotillard
cry — with all those little tour-
niqueted tics and red-faced con-
vulsions and mascara-streaked
paroxysms — is a mythical thing,
kind of like witnessing Tom Brady
connect on a 60-yarder while
being thronged by three J.J.Watt-
sized tissue boxes. It’s the ham-
mer she uses while nailing any
attention span to any frame the
second she steps through it, and
ultimately, one of the many rea-
sons her name, over the last 10
years, has become synonymous
with scene-stealing, bravura act-
ing.
Scene-stealing can’t be the
right word. Can it? Most of the
parts she’s taken since 2007 have
had first or second billing, so in
every sense of the term, she is the
consummate leading lady; you’d
expect her to be the one with her
hands on the reins. She doesn’t
steal scenes so much as over-
power them, crushing whoever’s
sharing screen time underneath
the weight of a giant tear duct.
They set her up, she spikes some
snot right back in their blank
face, probably whispering “watch
what’s about to happen, bitch”
in a soft French accent into their
ears, right before the cameras
start rolling. But when one takes
a step back, when one distances
oneself from the emotional water
fountain that is Marion Cotillard,
then one realizes that this woman
is also, perhaps, the only screen
presence — male or female — to so
perfectly embody despair, in all
its nuance, in over a decade.
She’s made a career of it, to
the point that watching her per-
formances can be an interest-
ing dissection project — one that
gives us a glimpse at the anatomy
behind effectively playing sad-
ness on film. What lets great
actors pull off weepy? What
makes their emotional heft reso-
nate across the screen? And what,
specifically, allows us to pin our
own thoughts, as wide-ranging
and ephemeral as they may be, to
what’s often nothing more than
just a brief closeup of another
human being’s face? The first step
to these answers lies in the role
that earned Cotillard an Oscar,
thrusting her into the Holly-
wood limelight from which she’s
methodically slunk in and out of
consideration ever since.
In “La Vie en Rose,” Cotillard
plays 20th century musical icon
Edith Piaf, and for most of the
film, that’s all she does — perfect-
ly mimicking mannerisms, cap-
turing the singer’s slight posture
or her imposing voice. She’s the
sponge sitting at movie’s center
in the way so many other actors
have sat the center of so many
other biopics about so many other
celebrated luminaries: what Dan-
iel Day-Lewis was to “Lincoln” or
David Oyelowo to “Selma,” Cotil-
lard is to “La Vie en Rose.” She’s
there in virtually every single
frame, the gravity around which
the scenes coalesce and the script
revolves. Still, I’m sure some
corny acting handbook some-
where expounds the reasons why
“mimicry can never mimic great
acting” — you need vulnerability
for that — and it isn’t until the lat-
ter half of the film that we get a
thorough first stab at those ques-
tions I posed earlier.
When Piaf, after years of
attachment issues, learns of her
husband’s
death,
she
breaks
down. It’s an obvious response to
an obvious, time-tested develop-
ment, yet how Cotillard embod-
ies it is nothing short of brilliant.
Basic logic suggests she could
have gone one of two ways with
it. A: balls to the wall wailing. B:
catatonic sorrow. But Cotillard
is smarter than that. She incor-
porates shades of the melodrama
and confusion that have been col-
oring the film thus far, so what we
see on screen is that much deeper,
that much more poignant than an
“obvious” choice.
It may seem like plain sob-
bing, but what’s truly intrigu-
ing about the portrayal are her
hands, though more so, her big,
doe-like eyes. The hands shud-
der, vibrate with an intensity
that evokes a woman in maudlin
shock, or to some degree, rifling
through some long-lost collection
of memories. Her eyes accompa-
ny this point and move through-
out the frame, searching for what
they know is gone. The result is
a potpourri of instinct that feeds
on open nerve endings and raw-
ness, melodrama and confusion.
It’s the work of someone not just
pulling off weepiness, but owning
it without even an inkling of res-
ervation. It’s as cathartic as act-
ing can hope to be.
Cotillard sheds the brashness
of that performance five years
later in “Rust and Bone,” a film
in which she’s cast as an orca
trainer who loses both her legs
after an on-the-job accident.
It’s the type of role you’d expect
the actress to shine in. Impos-
sible odds? Check. Top billing?
Check. Room to experiment?
Check. Crying? Check, check,
check. What you don’t expect
is silence, and that silence is
exactly what Cotillard uses to
bookend each of her scenes.
In the hospital room, after she
learns about the amputations,
we see her sobbing, then lulled
into a blissful, resigned sleep
that carries over her demeanor
across the movie. Sitting across
from a friend, discussing what
used to be her sex life, Cotil-
lard takes pains to ensure that
same silence is evident — a sort
of stressed fortitude that feels
almost dozy next to her work in
“La Vie en Rose.”
The scene works because
Cotillard’s face feels blank. The
half-open eyes, uncurved mouth
and pupils that feel lost in rev-
erie are anything but — they
click in harmony to let the audi-
ence project onto them. When
watching the exchange, it’s not
so much as waiting for the spe-
cific, delineated response we’ve
been trained to look for as it is
letting our own thoughts wash
over the screen.
The key to depression, and by
extension the key to despair, is
numbness, a vacuum of person-
ality that Cotillard can balance
with virtuoso emoting seem-
ingly at will. That tight-rope
strings together the entirety
of “Two Days, One Night,” in
which her character struggles,
heaves between two worlds, the
first marked by tearful sobbing
and the second by an acceptance
withheld until the film’s final
moments.
The movie is a conduit of
dualities. The frames are often
obviously divided down the
middle by a line to separate
Cotillard and the person she is
talking to. The dialogue itself is
repetitive so audiences can eas-
ily chalk out the delineations
between “saying” and “feeling”
that the filmmakers intend for
us to cling to. The central per-
formance becomes a combina-
tion of the actress’s work in “La
Vie en Rose” and “Rust” — we’re
walking toward the silence, but
through a minefield of instinct,
a river of apathy. Our guide is
Marion Cotillard, the woman
who’s made a career out of this
journey. The ambassador of
despair.
Seth is looking at videos of
women crying. To send him
yours, email akse@umich.edu.
Cotillard cries
“The exhibition
will open people
up to these
questions.”
This year’s
awards contain
an interesting
array of talent.
Best Original Song?
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
As long as Rita Ora doesn’t win.
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