Art Shanty Projects
Shanai and I volunteered for parking lot duty at Art Shanty Projects a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t been before, National Public Radio sums it up nicely:
Call it the Burning Man of the Midwest: a temporary city, built around artistic expression. Only this one takes place in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minn., in the middle of winter.
We’re looking forward to going back with more time to enjoy the shanties, including a handful by friends: Audio Adventure Shanty, Actually I’ve Been Pioneering New Enthusiasms, Fort Shanty, One Room Schoolhouse, and Letterpress Shanty. See the full list of shanties here. Just one more week left!
Artists now have the opportunity to work not only as makers but as facilitator/catalysts of change, or some hybrid of the two. The artists who choose public work continue to push those genre boundaries and explore new ways of working in community. Many such explorations involve knocking down the long-standing hierarchy of artist as creative expert and public as consumer. Many public practices require the participation of all involved, whether they self-identify as artists or not. Indeed, central to my public practice is the encouragement and recognition of the innate creativity in all people — and further, my work acknowledges that this powerful force needs and deserves an outlet, and that the provision of such can and will change communities and our world for the better.
Speaking of leadership fellowships, Colin and I are approaching the final weekend of the Creative Community Leadership Institute, a fellowship program for engaged artists and community developers that we’ve been taking part in for the past few months. It’s been an amazing experience, both in terms of the ideas we’ve been introduced to, and the people we’ve been fortunate to meet and learn with.
Last night I sat down to finish the final set of our readings, which included an excerpt from this book edited by one of CCLI’s faculty, Bill Cleveland, and Patricia Shifferd. This quote from the introduction really resonated, since it seems to describe the qualities that we aspire to, as well as those I think of as endemic to so many of our friends, close collaborators and Works Progress program regulars:
The growth of a sustainable culture will require persons who are skilled in problem-solving, critical analysis, holistic and systematic thinking, and who have the ability to suspend judgement while seeking solutions. These cultivators of the new world must also be adaptive, able to work co-operatively with others, and possess personal balance and internal grace. They must be able to identify with a particular place, a region, and to help preserve the unique cultural traditions and natural landscape of that place; without retreating to parochialism. They must not allow their communities to become everyplace that is no place. They must be empowered to create economic and political institutions which are respectful of each other and of nature. The task, in short, is one that will require a strong dose of the most powerful of human capacities - our creativity.
On the coldest weekend of the past winter, a group of artists from the Los Angeles-based Machine Project came to Minneapolis. This video shows what happened on their short visit. Colin and I had the pleasure of meeting Emily and Chris while they were here, and learning a little bit about their work and plans. We’re really looking forward to their return in July for a much larger residency project at the Walker Art Center, part of this summer’s Open Field program.
This Is Not a Gateway | 2011 Festival Call
Thanks to our friend Melissa, who went to the UK and came across This is Not a Gateway, another creative collective working at the intersection of art, design and public engagement. They have an open call for their 2011 Festival, which sounds like a symposium, but with much more inspiration and action. From the description:
“Proposals are welcome from anybody whose point of reference is ‘the city’. There is no fee to propose a project for the festival. Festival proposals must be critical and agitational; they must offer new propositions about cities. The festival offers a platform to discuss the politics and urgent questions at stake in cities.”
We should really start building our travel fund, there are just so many places to go. Too bad the grocery, rent and electricity funds are in constant need of replenishment.
In an atmosphere of representative culture and an increasing number of festivals, UrbanFestival is thought primarily as a platform, a place of experiment, a structure ready to react to local needs and intervene in the immediate context. The understanding of the city as a space that exists independently of built-in objects and practices, as a place that regulates our everyday practices, city as an expression and means of state power or the cruel interests of capital, this understanding we have decided to replace with the political understanding of the city – city as a place that is always and anew produced by the practices of its inhabitants.
Shanai and I happened upon a delightful art experience at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC last week. They were showing Hans Op de Beeck’s 22 minute film, Staging Silence (2009) in their Black Box theater. The film shows Hans and a studio assistant (whose arms are seen, and nothing else) construct and transform a series of images through the manipulation of material, light and time. The images are described as “abstract, archetypal settings that lingered in the memory of the artist as the common denominator of the many similar public places he has experienced.” It’s set to a playful score composed and performed by Serge Lacroix.
What we found most inspiring, though, was Hans’ use of programatic constraints: The stage itself is actually quite small, maybe 4’ wide by 3’ deep by 3’ high. The set pieces, for the most part, are found materials or made by hand. It’s filmed in black and white. The camera remains stationary for the duration of the film. These governing rules focus the the artist’s creativity and keep the audience watching to see what will happen next.
You can watch Staging Silence in it’s entirety here. We recommend getting comfy and watching it full screen.
The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep.
The best thing about having inherited the West Bank Social Center’s library is realizing you already have just the book you were looking for.
House boats for pleasure are not at all uncommon on the Mississippi River, but one built and equipped for scientific purposes was, until the past summer, entirely unknown on that stream, and, I am told, on most streams in this section of the country. Last March the writer was called to Minneapolis by the director of the State Zoological Survey, Professor Nachtrieb, and asked to suggest plans for further study of the fishes of the State. Among these suggestions was the one that a house boat, or rather, in this case, a floating laboratory, be built at Mankato to float down the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, at least as far as the State line.
