Liberty and Ellis Island are inherently connected.
In concept, in morality, in politics and in ethics.
One area they differ dramatically is function.
Liberty, as you well know, was a gift 'from the people of France'.
A commemoration of the centennial signing of the Declaration of Independence.
It was placed directly next to Ellis Island to greet fresh new immigrants coming to America's newly declared shores.
Liberty's purpose, in this sense, was one of hospitality, in monumental form.
Ellis Island on the other hand was the machinery behind this majestic reception.
It was the in-take, the processing, testing, census making and naturalisation component of successful human traffic flow.
12 million people were inspected and introduced to their new nationality here between the years of 1892 and 1954.
Back in the good old days only 2% of this total traffic was deported or denied access in the rush to build a nation.
For those 2% Ellis Island earnt the knickname 'Heartbreak Island' and 'Island of Tears'.
Eventually those heady days of promise and welcome had to end.
And end it did in 1924 with the introduction of the Immigration Act, which in particular banned all immigrants from Asia and reduced the amount of people to 2% of the number of people from that country that were already living in the USA allowed in.
Ellis as a result fell to the demise of internment and deportation camp status.
Meaning that the statue of liberty should have been shrouded in black from that point onwards, but obviously this was never considered.
Today it is as hard to get onto Liberty and Ellis Island as it was after 1924.
The rigorous screening process takes place inside a make-shift camp next to the pier where you board the tour boat to take you there.
There is little sense of what awaits you whilst you queue, except for the signs which read "airport style security checking inside".
In my shock at entering the 4th ring of hell I thought it would be interesting to take a photo.
This is the conversation that ensued:
NYPD or generic security or military "Maam you must delete your photo"
KW "why ?"
NYPD (voice raised and agitated) "Maam step to one side and delete your photo now"
KW "I didn't realise it was illegal"
NYPD (pointing her finger to a sign behind her head prohibiting the use of photocameras etc)
KW "okay, sorry I didn't see the sign but still I would like to know why before I delete my image"
NYPD (getting really visibly angry now) "what do you mean why, you can't ask me why"
KW "surely asking why isn't illegal yet, is it ?"
NYPD (on her walkie talkie) "calling units ..... we have a situation here"
Other police/security/military types show up and surround me.
KW "I am completely willing to abide the law and delete my picture, it was a genuine mistake, I didn't see the signs, but I still would like to know why. Before I comply with a law I like to why I am doing it"
new NYPD officer "we just don't want anyone knowing our operations Maam, now delete your photo"
KW "okay I guess that makes sense for you, here its deleted"
I don't want to be accused of causing problems, but I did find myself in a situation where it is simple and easy to panic and do what you are told without thinking.
All I wanted was someone to make sense and give me a valid reason for the intensive screening and invasion of privacy that I was exposed to as a tourist...
In 1990 they turned Ellis Island into a Museum of Immigration.
The interactive aspect of the museum is a good experience.
The census bureau have made quite a comprehensive map of the variety of nationalites currently living in America; their immgrant history and percentages of varying nationalities in each state.
New York still beats them all in the mix up race though.
Day eleven - your names not on the list, your not coming in. 
I hold a variety of personal, airing on the side of angry and highly critical opinions about my experience today.
The 'Report from Gaza and Roundtable Discussion' hosted by the Brecht Forum left me seething with questions that had to be internalised because of the lack of supposed open discussion.
Five speakers, each have just returned from the Gaza region in Palestine, each representative of their own committee, group, alliance or delegation - essentially pro Palestine and anti blockade.
All doing good and all congratulating each other on their capacity and capability to do good.
The audience was made up - as one speaker adoringly put it of "old faces".
But from what I could see and hear this translated as reformed middle aged left wing activist Jews.
Reformed in the sense of; recently made a 360 in their opinion of those damn, dirty, hating, fundamentalist Arabs, always committing acts of unspeakable terror on poor Israel.
And have, thankfully, realised that Israel's tired old tag line of "we need to defend our country" is perhaps not what it claims to be.
But Kelly, I hear you cry, what could possibly be wrong with a coalition and discussion group made up of active left wing middle class New Yorker Jews that are anti Zionist ?
And I answer: from one perspective nothing.
If we accept that their self congratulatory enlightenment is far too late and also comes with the added condition that their collective epiphany seem to involve persuading the general public that those damn Arabs are actually really lovely people and therefore don't deserve what is happening to them.
In fact quote "they are the warmest, most welcoming and kind nation of people I have ever met".
So our support comes with the condition that you are good and essentially like us.
Part of the report from Gaza was basically an expose on how normal Palestinians actually are, with the additional reaction of surprise from the audience.
Showing us that they posses the dimension to retain real dreams, desires, ambitions, pain, responsibilities, growing pains, awkwardness - you know like we do.
Thankfully I felt proud to come from a country where discussion and action regarding Palestine is a little more complex and intelligent.
Where persuading the most progressively thinking people of the characteristic normalcy of a nation of people has developed somewhat.
I must admit in my cynicism this post is only one aspect of what bothered me, I should reserve an entire blog for my criticisms of the validity of marching, protesting, petition signing and boycotting in 2009.
Day ten - facile Brechtian space. 
Dia: Beacon hosts/boasts a collection that includes large scale works by:
Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgouis and many more.
These are the big guns and the location does their work justice.
The experience is impressive, grasping your senses from all angles.
I, like many of my generation of artists cultivated our understanding of making, process, methodology and ideas through works like these.
This was a very contemporary trip down memory lane.
Work that was produced predominately in the 60's and 70's presented in a fresh, inspiring and considered context.
Sound as much as light as much as heavy material - steel, concrete, glass, wood - is moulded and shaped with the experiential in mind.
How we participate in active receivership remains essential in each artist's goal.
How we are exposed to, for example steel, as a somewhat caressing and delicate substance is the challenge.
Day nine - echos in the chamber of education
In contrast to the Dia foundation is the town of Beacon.
60 minutes north or so of New York City, Beacon is beautifully simple.
Surrounded by lush green exterior, a one high street, economically depressed, no mans land.
Not much happens in Beacon, a group of women sit in the Yankee Clipper diner discussing various ailments, diseases and viruses.
Relating their trips to the hospital, comparing doctors and the health of their friends.
The man working behind the counter in the petrol station doesn't speak any English but simultaneously manages to grasp my request for the bathroom, restroom, toilet, WC, whilst serving someone paying for gas, whilst talking in Hindi to a customer on the phone.
His capacity for multi-tasking was admirable.
I ask a young man in a pizza parlor where I can get a beer.
His reaction was utter bemusement.
The experimental, bourgeois, bohemian, trendy, hipster days of Brooklyn are long behind me.
I wonder if Beacon; town is effected in anyway by Beacon; art ?
The two so utterly dislocated.
The monumental aspirations of the work in Dia holds so little time for inconsequential moments of banality of the hamlet.
Day nine - potentially humdrum and threadbare.
Today was an interesting one.
Part one was The Power of Art at The Drawing Center.
A series of talks and panel lead discussion.
As is usual with these types of sunny afternoon,
sitting in a dark room listening to people talk things,
only 20% is only ever really very inspiring.
My 20% came in the form of John Welchman a British Professor in Modern Art History at the University of California, San Diego.
His talk 'Power Piracy and the Bloody Flux' discussed Paul McCarthy's recent piece 'La La Land Parody Paradise'
which was exhibited at The Whitechapel Gallery, in London in January.
He weaved together the historical contextual background of a pirate's life, cultures and behavioral patterns with an investigation into McCarthy's comparable parody of the numbing and dumbing process by which the era of sea piracy has undergone in the media in recent years.
A very succint but equally compelling synopsis of an artist who is caught between a cathartic chanelling of a depressed, repressed, amoral, consumer led and hypocratical America and re-enacting time and time again the theatre of cruelty through acts of constructed hollywood synthetic debasement.
Part two took me to Carrol Street south Brooklyn Rooftop Films.
Rooftop have been screening underground films in a variety of locations around New York for the past 5 years.
There I met Mark Elijah Rosenberg the creative director of Rooftop.
We, along with a few 100 more people watched a live performance by the band 'Live Bells'.
A Tortoise esque, progressively dreamy instrumental band from Ohio.
And the film 45635.
The film was an overview of the small suburban town of Sidney, Ohio follwing the lives of 4 central figures drifting between shots of the banal and mundane, everyday life in context of boredom, financial struggle, love, growing pains and bouts of roaring laughter and exhibitionism.
After meeting the sibling duo directors Bill and Turner (and their Father Bill), all orignally from Sidney and hearing that McCarthy's pirate project was actally developed, realised and instigated in collaboration with his son Damon McCarthy.
I took a taxi home listening to Sly and The Family Stone's 'Family Affair' on my pod.
Day eight, bloods thicker than mud.
Today had a listless and languid start.
Late out of bed, late to breakfast, late into the shower, late out of the door, late to Roosevelt Island.
Sometimes I have these days, I'm just generally late for everything.
I remember my Nan once saying "one day you'll miss your own funeral" and if I recall correctly at the time I thought "surely that can't be a bad thing".
She also used to say "if a bomb dropped on your bedroom you still wouldn't wake up in the morning".
As a small person I would have vivid imagery of this event occurring, it was simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.
My school books would be disheveled and torn, teddy bears ripped into a million pieces, my bed became the site a big black hole, but somehow I was always safely and soundly asleep in the middle of all this chaos.
Keeping people waiting is never good and it won't help you win friends, but being a late person is (well should be) deemed a medical condition.
Some people just can't help it.
The time keepers of this world would be horrified at this notion.
In their universe the time and their bodies are one, 'keeping time' presents itself with very little problem.
But for us people that live outside of the world of time and instead in the realm of the imaginary and dreamy, prescribing to these rules and regulations is no easy task.
As you can imagine I never (and I mean never) got to school on time.
There are just too many other interesting things in this world than the place you have to be at 9 am.
I'm sorry my story features very little on Roosevelt Island.
Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind, the whole excursion presented only small joys.
The cable car that put me back on Manhattan however was great.
Much like a fair ground ride but with the added mundanity of a commuter train.
After a rather uneventful day on Roosevelt Island - which as I read a thousand times in the historical society literature was formerly known as Hog Island, formerly known as Blackwell Island, formerly known as Welfare Island - I jumped over to Chelsea for an opening at x initiative project space.
I sat on the rooftop with a beer and they played a song I have searching for for a long time: Erotic City by Prince.
My day was complete.
Day seven - the island formerly known as...
