Published: New York Times Style Magazine
May 2008

 

Other rules encompass kitchen etiquette, the management of the "strategic reserve" of 300 frozen salmon and the necessity of obeying the Art Class Alarm, which draws together the Territory at any hour, night or day, for an art project.
Ostroverhy had led me through the Territory's spaces: the Writer's House, the tech room, the studio, the kitchen, the Hash Hut. ("A poet we had only composed under the influence of marijuana. So we created the Hash Hut, in which we over-securitized for the fire hazard.") Our tour concluded, we chatted over a samovar of tea. "I cannot tell you all the secrets of the Territory," Ostroverhy said. "The Territory exists and evolves by itself. It transpires. It becomes open, then it becomes closed." He paused and shook his head. "Very strange idea."
Strange, perhaps; or maybe the only sensible answer to a would-be bohemian Paris, fixed like a dead butterfly to the glories of its own past. "It is crazy to find this, the Territory, today, in the heart of Paris,"