To You, Little Bigger than a Sweet Summer Pink Peach
Jong Il Ma, 2008 sculpture at Socrates Sculpture Park
This three-dimensional colorful drawing that is a joyous tangle in the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York City, captures the energy and delight I have been feeling since the trees began to blossom here and the tulips and daffodils are popping open. The sculptor named it “To You, Little Bigger than a Sweet Summer Pink Peach.” I guess right after it was installed last fall, a big storm blew it on its side. It has since been put upright, though I am not sure it matters.
I have been re-reading philosopher Bruce Wilshire on field theory and he noted that there “seems to be only a field of dynamically reciprocating and dancing energies, interlacing ‘nodes’ within a ‘field.’” The zooming curves and swooping colors here animate this otherwise unremarkable park and make tangible the ideas of Bruce Wilshire on the importance of the arts in challenging old divisions and inventories.
Detail of Jong Il Ma sculpture
View of Manhattan from Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, across Jong Il Ma sculpture
Actions
Sarah Ross, Mobile Suit
Another inspiring link from Sarah Ross: Actions, a show at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). The exhibit includes suits that transform into swings, mobile pool tables, urban farms, dumpster diving, and Sarah’s own velour suits for urban lounging. The table wedged between freeway columns activates the space in a way that creates intimacy. CCA has also issued a Call to Actions on their playful website.
Table inserted, SYN
Imagining America, Part One
Promotional material for Cornerstone Theater
A friend recently asked me what two things I learned from attending the annual conference of Imagining America in early October 2008. In general, I will say that 1) it matters to see people in their home milieu, and 2) it demystified public engagement work for me. The conference was quite small, and mostly West Coasters, which makes sense given that it was in Los Angeles. So to be able to see what Angelenos are doing in Los Angeles meant that I saw evidence of incredibly hard work, against tall odds, by a relatively few people.
Judy Baca gave the keynote address and told the story of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, which she founded in Venice (CA) thirty years ago. Now with a certain level of support, she creates digital murals at the Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab, funded by the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is on the faculty. I wrote about that Lab in a previous post on April 11, 2008.
So many other activities from the last few years had a presence in Los Angeles:
- The Bresee Community Center and the Echo Park Film Center, among others, supported youth in creating media about important issues, like gentrification. Stephanie Cisneros, for example, created “Echo Park: A Different View,” which is about 8 minutes long and available on YouTube. Some of the Spanish-to-English translations are a little off, but it gives a real feel for a rapidly changing neighborhood around 2004.
- Homeboy Industries and Homegirl Cafe, started by Father Greg Boyle, provides jobs for former gang members and good food for the community. I brought home a copy of the DVD, “Father G and the Homeboys,” narrated by Martin Sheen. It tells the story of an organization being built up, burned down, and otherwise hugely challenged over the last twenty years.
- I was able to see a read-through of the Cornerstone Theater‘s “For All Time,” part of their Justice Cycle. This featured a large cast depicting experiences and attitudes toward punishment and retribution on the part of victims, families, and incarcerated people.
- Michael John Garces and Paula Donnelly from the Cornerstone Theater led a group of about 40 of us in an engaging workshop on “Turning Community Stories into Art.” The Cornerstone is an ensemble-based company in LA that combines professional actors and community members in productions that are often original works. They’ve been refining their techniques for over twenty years. It was great to participate in their cultural mapping exercises, and sample some of the ways they draw stories out of people with whom they co-create performances.
Gaullimaufry
I learned this cool word–gallimaufry–from a recent interview with Germaine Greer. She said it meant “a thing of threads and patches” and my dictionary says, “hodge podge.” In any case, it is an apt word for the meanderings I post here and my daily life, for that matter.
Mobile Pieces on exhibit
The artist Sarah Ross had an exhibit at Northwestern University that opened in October, InAction. She created mobile pieces that people can remove from the gallery and take with them to a public place that needs some “InAction.” These pieces include pads, pillows, and other lounging “equipment” that folks can use to lie down in a plaza, or otherwise “do nothing” in public.
drawing of mobile pieces in use
Aesthetics and Protest
The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest #6 is out! There are some very fine pieces in it too. Thanks to Robby Herbst, I was able to look it over. Amy Franceschini is interviewed by Christina Ulke on the San Francisco Victory Gardens+2007. Urban agriculture is on the rise, coast to coast. Amy F’s folks were farmers and each had very different takes on the politics of food, but she has her own version, including teaming up with Slow Food Nation to garden in front of SF’s City Hall. There are some nice b&w photos of the garden juxtaposed with the Beaux-Arts municipal headquarters. I got to meet Christina when we were together on the Political Equator 2 trip over a year ago. So, I am glad to “reconnect” with her in print.
There’s an article about InCUBATE, closer to my neck of the woods: the Institute for Community Understanding Between Art and the Everyday, in Chicago. They are committed to exploring a range of sources for support of cultural production. The late Ben Schaafsma, the author of this article and co-founder of InCUBATE, cited one of my favorite books, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (South End Press, 2007). (Ben died October 25, 2008, at age 26, after being struck by a car while walking in NYC. What a loss!)
Brett Bloom and Bonnie Fortune tell readers about the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor and the Library of Radiant Optimism. It was a pleasure to gather at Bonnie and Brett’s house last summer to hear about part of the mobile symposium around food security issues that they helped organize. Continental Drift (Brian Holmes‘ ruminations on neoliberal globalization and then some) started in Champaign-Urbana and moved north and west. They’ve already collectively published a book about some of what they learned: A Call to Farms!
I really liked learning about Julianna Parr’s crafts nights that she holds in bars. Googly eyes, paper, gluesticks, whatever, and a few drinks, really gets the conversations going! Speaking of conversation Daniel Tucker and Nato Thompson staged regional meetups with particular invited guests to talk about models of art and activism, in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baltimore, New York City, and Chicago. They had a set series of questions and asked individuals to speak about two or three of them, very briefly. Suzanne Lacy was part of the Los Angeles conversation. The questions were about how art motivates an audience, how the local economy affects people’s art practice, how a particular artistic event expanded social networks and offered political potential, how a politically-engaged art practice relates to social movements, and how these practices tie into larger, national structures. Christina Ulke quoted Lozeh Luna: “DETRAS DE NOSOTROS ESTAMOS USTEDES,” a saying that has a wonderful Mobius strip-like meaning. Not sure I know what radical aesthetics are, but I liked this issue of JOAAP. Keep it up!
YES!
Holding hands in the subway tile mosaic
Jane Rendell wrote in 2000: “…[A]rchitecture takes inspiration from other spatial arts. Architects can learn possible tactics and strategies from the work of feminists in dance, film, art and writing, as well as those artists operating in the public spaces of the city, for example, Niki de Saint Phalle, Maya Lin and Suzanne Lacy.”
I want to add “should” in Jane’s written statement above. Jane’s 2006 book, Art and Architecture: A Place Between, offers so many ideas for the design professions, building on her previous work.
Active History
There’s a conference coming up in the Fall of 2008 in Toronto called “Active History.” I have been having email “conversations” with several colleagues about the roles that history plays in contemporary art practice, in design studios, and in community settings. Nick Brown reminded me of a couple of efforts in Pittsburgh and in Toronto that engage in what Greg Sholette and his group called REPOhistory 
: The Missing Plaque Project in Toronto and the Howling Mob Society. The Toronto-based group (really one artist, Tim Groves) creates posters on overlooked historical events.
The Howling Mob Society focuses on the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and makes markers telling about the events related to that strike, one of which is on the left here. When markers like this, or posters, or actions in public occur on the streets it is a kind of informal education, with layers of a site uncovered that many don’t know about. The Active History conference will include sessions on community research, archeology, labor history (or as they say in Canada, labour history), and grassroots activism.
Cesar Chavez Digital/Mural Lab
Together with UCLA, the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), founded by Judy Baca in Los Angeles 28 years back, runs the only lab that creates community-based digitally-generated public art for murals, the Cesar Chavez Digital/Mural Lab. SPARC also works with folks to create banners, websites, performances, video and public monuments.
“The Great Wall of Los Angeles” is pictured above. Started by Judy with local teens in 1976, and added to for the next 25 years, it is now in need of restoration. SPARC also has published a lot about muralism and has archives related to mural creation, so it is a great resource.
Mali Intersection, Urbana Crossroads
Isn’t this cool? What a way to mark an intersection! Here’s what artist Janet Goldner writes about it:
The Association Segou-Laben, a group of artists in Segou [Mali] including bogolan artist Boubacar Doumbia and sculptor Amahiguere Dolo, invited me to collaborate with them to create a steel sculpture for a traffic circle on the major highway that leads from Bamako to the north of the country. The work is based on Bamana history, symbolism and mythology. The sculpture plays an important role in of the renewal of Segou.
I just came from an Urbana City Council meeting where it was voted to table the public arts commission again, although the council seems to be moving toward consensus. But some of what is lacking for me in these meetings is the kind of imagery and creative energy evident in this collaborative Malian work. The talkiness of meetings, the sterility of the room, the formality of Robert’s Rules of Order don’t come close to sparking imaginations or galvanizing people around some wonderful visual marker on a major intersection. Instead our crossroads are marked by another humdrum three-story panel-brick building that will have more shops, places to spend money if you have it. I know, these commercial properties generate taxes, and maybe some jobs, not a small thing. But I’d rather have a crazy, large-scale piece of art.
The Elusive Urbana Public Arts Commission, Part Two
This morning I wrote another letter to the members of the Urbana City Council. They are to discuss the proposal to create a Public Arts Commission on Monday night, after tabling it two weeks ago. Money is the sticking point. I am always concerned that I sound like an academic (which, of course, I am) so I tried to keep it short:
Toby Miller in his most recent book _Cultural Citizenship_ (2008) states that we are in a “crisis of belonging.” He uses the phrase “cultural citizenship” to discuss the “seemingly indirect processes [including arts policies] by which members of society” are engaged with their governments and local civic organizations. Other authors like anthropologist Renato Rosaldo have used the phrase to describe how communities use culture to come together—-in neighborhoods, workplaces, churches, and activist groups. To distill these authors’ arguments rather crudely: pluralistic groups need cultural endeavors to bring them together and begin or continue the difficult job of thriving together. This urgent need to work toward common civic goals is the main reason why I support the public arts commission. The arts provide ways to build relationships across diverse groups that build trust, bring joy, and sometimes provide “neutral” ground for dialogues around challenging and divisive issues.
Miller’s recent book focuses on television, expanding on material he discussed in his book, Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media (Minnesota, 1998). Renato Rosaldo has published a lot I am sure, being as he is a full professor at Stanford, NYU, and other similar institutions. But the article that I mentioned above is over ten years old: (1994)”Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy,” Cultural Anthropology, 9(3): 402-411.
