Josh posted on Candy Chang‘s last project, I Wish This Was, late last year and it was really inspiring. Such a simple gesture is such a powerful tool for re-imagining a community.
Today, I saw Chang’s latest project, Before I Die in NOLA — another lovely participatory public art project. Perhaps not quite as transformative as I Wish This Was, but the density in this project perhaps makes up for it.
I found this post not too long ago and have been wanting to make one of these ever since. What’s making these balloons glow is the pollutants in the air around them, with colours ranging from green (signifying excellent air quality) to red (poor air quality).
Photo by wyliepoon.
A couple months ago I attended a talk hosted by Janine Marchessault on the Leona Drive project, which is a collaboration between The Public Access Collective and L.O.T. : Experiments in Urban Research (Collective).
Justin mentioned the Leona Drive Project back in 2009, but for a refresher: The Leona Drive project commissioned artist projects for a site specific exhibition in a series of six vacant bungalows slated for demolition by HYATT HOMES, a developer in Willowdale, Ontario (in the Yonge and Finch area of the GTA). The artists worked with a variety of media: audio, cell phones with GPS, architectural installation, projection, photography, sculpture and performance for a period of two weeks in the fall of 2009.
Continue reading “Janine Marchessault & the Leona Drive Project”
A 25 foot flag pole was installed on the UIC campus at 1240 W Harrison St. in front of Gallery 400 in May 2005. In October 2008, Philip von Zweck resumed the project on the UIC campus at 400 S. Peoria St. in front of the College of Architecture and the Arts building.
This space is open to anyone in the greater-Chicago area to use for one week.
With this project von Zweck seeks to provide the community with a democratized space that fosters expression free of the veil of anonymity.
Contact information for the author of every weekly flag encourages dialogue between the author of the flag and its visitors.
temporary allegiance by Philip von Zweck for Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago
This project, appropriately called “I Wish This Was“, was created by New Orleans designer Candy Chang. Candy actually did her B.F.A. at the University of Michigan and created a design firm and record label called Red Antenna. The project you see above is quite a simple, but powerful, little proposition. She created a vinyl sticker design based on the famed “My Name Is…” badge with the intention that people would fill them out and stick them to anything in the city. Apparently her idea has caught the attention of quite a few concerned citizens; there is a Flickr album full of examples. I’ve included a few below. This reminds me of something that Windsor’s graphic designers could do as a sort of weekend public design project.
I’ve written about Power House over in Detroit before. Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert of Design99 started this Hamtramck-based neighbourhood project a couple of years ago now. Able to take advantage of the radically declining real estate market, they bought up a house for $100 and have since been working in the neighbourhood on small and large scale projects that tackle the potential of art affecting change.
They’ve since been featured in exhibitions at the DIA‘s project space and at MOCAD, but the really interesting stuff is, of course, happening on the ground. Juxtapoz assisted Cope and Reichert in buying more foreclosed homes to be used as project spaces, Power House is now Power House Productions and a formal 501(c)(3) Non-Profit, and they’re thinking about doing things like creating a Neighborhood Bike Shop and Skate Parks and Bike Courses.
Model D‘s latest article on Power House Productions frames the work well:
They’ve been organizing block clubs with their neighbors where they’re tackling everyday concerns like garbage pickup and snow removal — not ruminating on notions of gentrification and art theory. They are knee deep in the notion and practice that art can fuel community development — and not necessarily just the community that typically “consumes” art.
So, art as social practice? Certainly, yes. This work will undoubtedly become a touchstone for writing around social practice, publicly-engaged practices, and contemporary art at the end of first decade of the 2000s. However, even framing the discussion around art is perhaps doing the project (and neighbourhood) an injustice. These artists are taking on the role (or is it responsibility) of being community leaders in the neighbourhood — artists as community leaders. Not artists performing the role of a community leader, not artists creating an exhibition on community leaders, not merely facilitating workshops on what it means to be a community leader, but really stepping into a role that raises a lot of questions and maybe, just maybe, does some real good.
And there are questions, of course. One has to wonder about what’s at stake when a real neighbourhood becomes an art project (and we have to look no further than the Heidelberg Project to see some of these implications), and one also has to keep a suspicious eye open around issues of gentrification, or the parachute effect of public art practices, or even just the moral and ethical dilemma of spurring a kind of development in a place that didn’t necessarily ask for it.
For the moment though, I think we need to step outside of those issues and look at the project with some fresh curiosity. Perhaps aside from the 17-year-long Project Row Houses, there isn’t a readily available model to understand this kind of art practice, and I’m ready to start wondering about what a model of artists as community leaders/activators/instigators with a long-term investment can do to change a place. And of course I’m curious — that’s pretty much what I hope we’re doing here.
via Model D Media
Ceyetano Ferrer, City of Chicago (Iowa #2), 2006
Street artist Ceyetano Ferrer specializes in blending urban objects into their environments by painting layers over them in a way that makes them seem transparent. Ferrer uses photo stickers on public objects like street signs, boxes and billboards and camouflages them to create an illusion of the objects fading into the landscape. -via PSFK.com
The public art works of Ceyetano Ferrer are quite stunning on first glance. The optical illusion he creates seems at first impossible and mysterious, though the process is as “simple” as placing a well-planned sticker on to a surface. As far as “street art” goes, this very much falls in line with the guerilla style shock and awe that makes the genre so exciting and valuable in a certain sense of subversiveness.
Continue reading “Urban Camouflage And The Potentials of Commissioned ‘Street Art’”
During this past week, the 44th Kent State Folk Festival was held. The festival is the second oldest continuously produced folk festival on a college campus, preserving folk and heritage music through concerts, workshops and educational programs. There’s an authenticity here.
What’s really interesting about this particular event though, is how I found out about it. The popular marketing, trends, and culture website PSFK.com featured the campaign used for the festival. The design and marketing group Marcus Thomas created this campaign that enacts an interesting dialogue around the prevalence of social media and its role in and effects on contemporary music culture.
The overt criticism of social media networks is an inspiring gesture. It seems to have become so easy to click a “Like” button or click “I’m Attending” (without the social obligation to do so), when local music (and cultural) scenes are in greater need than ever to have “real” attendees to live shows and events.
The campaign is, however, also a bit hypocritical since the festival makes use of extensive social networking and internet based advertising — making this ironic gesture only fuels the “buy in” to social networking.
These points can go for other social groups or events, like Broken City Lab. Sometimes a lot of the networking is done in a digital context. This barrier of separation is sometimes difficult to surpass, in order to make that connection in person. It’s often worth the “trouble” of leaving the virtual sphere and venturing out into the city, it’s just a matter of figuring out what exactly the barrier is to seeing that happen more often. How communities are shaped online and translated into real space is going to become an increasingly important question.
It’s a conversation that’s been had many times before, but still worth bringing up — how does one translate online networks into real action?
All posters from Marcus Thomas Marketing Agency via PSFK.com
During World War II the United States was able to mobilize industry and motivate its citizens in breathtaking speed. Factories were overhauled and consumption habits transformed. Strong, graphically compelling posters played a crucial role in the success of this campaign.
These posters presented the actions of individual citizens as vital for the nation and portrayed those who took part as attractive, dynamic American heroes.
Today a similar mobilization is required to address the crisis of global climate change and achieve energy independence. That’s why The Canary Project and its partners have launched Green Patriot Posters.
Green Patriot Posters is a communications campaign centered on posters that encourage all U.S. citizens to build a sustainable economy. These posters can be general (“We Can Do It!”) or can promote a specific sustainability action.
This quote is taken from the About section of the group Green Patriot Posters. The website greenpatriotposters.org allows you to browse the submitted posters, get inspired, and submit your own poster. The aesthetic bar appears very high, though they possess a wide array of styles. Above, the cover for their newly released book “Green Patriot Posters: Images For A New Activism” published by Metropolis Books in the US and Thames & Hudson in the UK. The group is also very proud of their methods of production.
Continue reading “Images For A New Activism: The Posters of Green Patriotism”
Ailanthus altissima, a name that may not be in any way familiar, though there is a very good chance that a person who lives in the urban centers of Windsor or Detroit sees this “ancient” tree on a daily basis. This tree is known as “Tree of Heaven” or to some “Tree from Hell.”
The tree of heaven is a native to northeast China and Taiwan, it thrives in temperate climates and is capable of reaching heights of 15 meters in 25 years, though it has a relatively short lifespan of 50 years. What might be the significance of this tree you may ask. Well, it’s on the forefront of the cultural mythos of Detroit’s current revitalization.
This is not the first time that the Tree of Heaven has been reclaimed as an icon for cultural growth in circumstances and environments of neglected or “broken” urban centers. In 1943, Betty Smith wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which features the Tree of Heaven as its main metaphor for “the ability to thrive in a difficult environment.”
There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly…survives without sun, water, and seemingly earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.
–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Introduction
