Category: Conversations
Karen Demavivas
Can you comment on the concept of “cultural fluency” as it relates to a nomadic life and how it’s shaped your diverse experiences as a culture worker?
To me, cultural fluency is not about consistency or expertise in any given locale or field such as art or literature, but more a reference to fluid continuity and interconnection among sites and disciplines. In my case, it meant audaciously shifting from one community, knowledge system, and ecosystem to another and then, at times, back again.
Perhaps I can begin with Brooklyn. I was fresh out of college in the cornfields of the Midwest, had a taste of studying abroad in London, and was seeking a more cosmopolitan place to start my career. I got the internship at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and that sealed the deal to move East. Cheap rent in those days meant moving to a railroad apartment in Williamsburg and slumming it with other creative transplants and early gentrifiers – for better or worse! My wide-eyed self held ambitions as an administrator and curator in the New York contemporary art world and, sure enough, I was exposed early on to some of the most prominent artists and professionals working in the field such as Jeanne-Claude and Christo, Nam June Paik, and Matthew Barney.
But this linear ambition was somehow derailed by a moment of travel in Asia and 9/11. Late in 2001, an undeniable feeling arose that I wanted to do more for the world and that meant leaving Brooklyn for a while. So I went abroad to engage with themes of social change, community-building, and sustainability through cultural projects and experiences. The initial idea was to break out of gallery walls, then geographic boundaries, then rigid definitions about what it meant to be a culture worker in any given field. My interventions started in the abstract realm of art – in symbolic, poetic, and aesthetic forms and actions. Then they merged into more concrete forms of development work at the international, regional and local community levels. But I would always meander back to forms of creativity for inspiration and insight on where my vision would take me next.
So I would get off the beaten track but somehow always found myself back in Brooklyn. It went something like this: Chiang Mai, then Paris, then Afghanistan, then Morocco, then Mongolia, then Chiang Mai again, then Brooklyn, then a global bubble called UN Headquarters, then South Africa, then Brooklyn again (plus the rest of the 4 boroughs in my role at NYFA), then São Paulo, and now – deep ocean breath – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But not to worry, the exciting momentum of the World Cup and Olympics in Rio will not stop me from returning for a dose of home in the near future.
Each time I would come back to regroup and reposition myself and it would be a different relationship to the surrounding context and communities in Brooklyn. Yet I was grounded in a broader perspective of what it meant to be back in the comfort of home as part of a global community. I had cast a wider net while fishing: grass-roots activists on the Thai-Burma border, conservation experts in Paris, international development advisors and diplomats at the UN, and hands-on culture workers and organizations collaborating with communities of color and immigrants in New York.
I would also stumble upon unexpected moments of continuity in experience among friends in Brooklyn. One of the artists in this show Hiroki Kobayashi and I had both spent time in northern Thailand and our first conversation at FiveMyles Gallery meditated on the different rhythm of life there. There was a prolonged pause as we just sat there in the moment of us knowing and feeling exactly what that meant in that specific time and place for us. Another friend in the show David Court and I had a cerebral discussion about how the concept of “relational aesthetics” penned by French curator Nicolas Bourriaud related to his work on spatial experiences and textual descriptions in a park in Canada. It just so happened that I had met with Bourriaud himself years before at the historic Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris to discuss how this same concept framed the site-specific art project I was researching in the rice fields outside of Chiang Mai.
Karen Demavivas: Walking in Mongolian Steppes
While grappling with this research on Southeast Asia, I was already working in a different field at UNESCO Headquarters focused on Central Asia. It was a role grounded in another area of my research on how nomadic tents during the era of Genghis Khan’s campaigns informed sedentary architecture in what is now Afghanistan. In both regions, I also had a driving interest in how the politics of cultural heritage related to community development: in Thailand with ethnic communities from the Northern region and Burma; and in Afghanistan with the ethnic Hazaras (of Mongolian descent) who were historically repressed by the dominant Pashtun tribes in the region. Yes, I know, it’s a head spin for me, too.
These dynamic moments of exchange inform a fluid cycle: as I move forward and engage with new faces and experiences, the more and more I am reminded of people, sites, and contexts from my past.
What would be another name besides “culture worker” for your role in the field?
“Accidental ethnographer” comes to mind: a way of informally entering and exiting communities and places without ever fully saying goodbye. It is “accidental” in that I was never formally trained as an expert in these observations and engagements with culture and community. Rather, my “field work” developed organically, grounded in the reality of the day-to-day, chance (or fate), the recognition of windows of opportunity and reciprocity, and acting upon them. I would fluidly and respectfully learn, adapt, and contribute to specific relationships, projects and places. Then I would slip away without much ceremony, but still maintain a kind of continuity, an opening to return…
I once lived for a time with a herder community in the steppes of Mongolia. I would help set up the ger (a permeable felt-covered trellis tent), ride horses, herd the sheep and goats on the hillside, milk cows, and welcome visitors. They would often come unannounced. We would serve them buttermilk tea with milk straight from the cow that morning, some dried mutton from animals slaughtered in winter, and steamed dumplings. There would be some talk of horse thieves, the changing weather, the state of grazing, the health of the herds – and perhaps some throat songs. Then the visitors would get up and head for the tent opening without so much as an adieu. They would simply mount their horses and ride off without a glance – until next time – to venture out into the wide, open space of the sublime.
Karen Demavivas is an internationalist, culture worker, and change-maker who resides in Brooklyn when she is not living abroad. She served as Program Officer of the Immigrant Artist Project at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Prior to that, Karen was a two-time Fulbright Fellow, which led to specialist roles in culture and development at UNESCO and the UN Population Fund, NY. Her art and culture writing has been featured in the Brooklyn Rail, the Bangkok Post, and Art4D Magazine, among others. She is currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Malesha Jessie
What made you interested in challenging the traditional trajectory or parameters of an opera singer?
So many things made me want to challenge the traditional idea of the ‘opera singer.’ Firstly, I know that I don’t look like a typical opera singer, and just about every person I meet reminds me of that fact, actually. I knew I had this talent, and I knew it wasn’t typical. Instead of letting that hold me back, I took a step forward and decided to embrace my non-traditional look and my natural hair and boldly share my gift with those who lived closest to me. It’s so strange how we opera singers can travel all over the world, wear costumes and wigs, and sing in several different languages, and the very people closest to us may never hear us sing because they didn’t buy a ticket to our performance. So many of my friends, relatives, and neighbors could know me for years and still not have heard me sing, let alone know I sing opera. I thought it was time to share my gift and abandon tradition. Tradition can hold us back. While there is still great need for the wealthy patron, opera has got to expand and be what it always was: musical storytelling. And anyone, regardless of their economic situation, can appreciate a good story and they deserve to be at the “dinner table.” I am concerned for opera’s role in society today. It has always been an elite art form, but it’s going to need to expand its doors to the whole community.
How did performing in non-traditional places inform your work as a vocal artist? Are you continuing this type of practice outside of Brooklyn?
This venture into non-traditional performance and venue has caused me to be able to embrace my whole self, the same “self” that has to act a character. I am more comfortable with who I am, and it is expressed in my voice and my body. It is in fact, me that people pay money to hear. No one wants to watch a phony on stage.
This boldness helped me to launch Opera Open-Stage nights. I took what I loved about the open-mic scene in Slam Poetry and decided to incorporate that communal and supportive spirit in the opera field. Opera singers need an underground scene to keep us inspired too. I plan to start Opera Open-Stage nights in Southern California.
Any memorable encounters while filming “Guerrilla Opera” in Bed-Stuy?
I loved singing in the bodega and being mocked by a customer who also called me “cute.” I am often mocked by folks, including family and friends. It’s funny how opera can be a joke to so many people and at the same time, be profoundly beautiful. The juxtaposition of humor and serious music-making is in all of these videos.
What prompted you to start MuseSalon Collaborative (a socially conscious network that supports artists and arts organizations), and how does it affect you, as a performer and artist?
MuseSalon came from a burning desire to connect artists with one another. Artists are powerful and vital to society and we need each other in order to manifest our talents and visions and color the world. I came to realize this profoundly when living in New York, the artist’s Mecca. My artistic identity is fueled by my awareness of my community, and I want to be an active member of the community. I cannot merely make art and ignore those closest to me, both fellow artists and neighbors.
Malesha Jessie is a versatile artist of both the operatic and concert stages. She received her Masters of Music degree from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and her Bachelor of Music degree from California State University, Fullerton. Jessie has sung throughout Europe and the United States, including performances with the Boston Pops Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, and the San Francisco and Los Angeles Operas. She is the founder of Muse Salon Collaborative, a social enterprise that fosters cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration through an international arts network. Jessie recently relocated from Brooklyn to San Diego, CA.
Thomas Leeser
When designing cultural institutions and museums, what is your approach to the building’s relationship to its community and the city at-large?
Architecture is itself a form of cultural production and as such one of the first things to consider is its impact on the community, on the institution itself and its contribution to the city at large. Architecture plays a key role in the way we feel about our cities, neighborhoods and the environment we live in. It is therefore very important to realize that architecture is in many ways one of the most powerful voices an institution like a museum may have. This puts the architect into a position of extreme responsibility far beyond the mere functionality of a building.
Since the recession, have you seen a shift in attitudes for design that reflect an arts organization’s relationship to the city, including issues such as politics, race, and gentrification?
All I know is that when we started with the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, it was a very different neighborhood. Many things changed over the years, and after we opened the museum in 2011, it had become apparent even to people who initially felt that the architecture wouldn’t matter that much in a neighborhood with very little foot traffic, that it was quite the contrary. Architecture mattered in a real big way. It suddenly helped shape a new identity for the neighborhood. People who you wouldn’t expect to pay attention to Astoria suddenly talked about it as if it was a new institution on the Upper East Side. It was really interesting how people who would never go to this part of the city suddenly knew about it. At the same time, it was really satisfying to see how people who had lived in the neighborhood for a long time suddenly developed a new sense of pride. This was really one of the greatest moments for me as an architect – to see how architecture actually affected peoples lives in such a positive way. It was a confirmation of what I believe is our biggest task as architects in our society. And I think a similar thing is happening with BRIC House. All of a sudden, BRIC House has a face that one can see, a locus that one can recognize and orient oneself on within parts of Brooklyn. All of a sudden you can feel and see the institution that was literally invisible before.
Your design for BRIC House (which will for the first time bring the organization’s contemporary art, performing art, and community media programs under the same roof), incorporates a very large indoor stoop. Are there other architectural gestures that encourage interaction and exchange between artists and the public, or that ties the building’s activities to Brooklyn culture?
The large stoop is of course central to the design, the institution, but it’s also meant to be symbolically central to the neighborhood. Brooklyn is a multi-cultural city unlike any other, and BRIC House is located precisely at Brooklyn’s cultural center. As such, it seemed appropriate to provide a non-formal place for social interaction precisely between the theater, the TV studio, the gallery and the street. And it is at the street level where we made a small but significant gesture by pushing the street front into the facade as to allow a visual and physical connection with passersby to the symbolic center of BRIC House.
Architecture can have a profound affect on a community. How does engaging with that community and ‘place’ affect you, as an architect?
It is the very reason to be an architect. To affect the community and our environment, which means to change it. Change – in the sense to enable one to understand one’s environment and world around us in a new way – allows us to see things in a different light and to open one’s experience and the way we feel about things. This is what we can only hope to achieve when we design for our community, and this is what affects us as architects in return.
Has your vision and design approach as an architect changed by working with many artists, performers, and arts organizations over the years?
I started as an artist, which I feel is a very uncomfortable description of one’s activities. Maybe this is why I decided to become an architect, and yes, working with artists is always influencing the way I think about things. This is what artists need to do, and this is what I want to be inspired by.
Being based in DUMBO and in a building that includes artist studios, non-profit organizations, and an incubator for media start-ups, is cross-arts collaboration or dialogue something you seek out? Or is it a natural part of your life and work?
It is of course both, but being in an arts community like DUMBO, a lot happens by osmosis. Just walking down the street and seeing many ideas leaking out of the many workshops, galleries or the theater across the street is daily inspiration for me.
Thomas Leeser studied architecture at the University of Darmstadt, Germany and at The Cooper Union, NY under John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman, Raimund Abraham and Bernard Tschumi. He has taught at such institutions as Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard universities, and he is currently a professor at Pratt Institute. Leeser Architecture has won many international awards, including most recently the prestigious Red Dot Award for the design of the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Current large scale projects are under construction in Abu Dhabi, Bangkok and New York.
Laurie Cumbo
How do you feel Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) has influenced the greater arts community and Brooklyn residents at-large?
I believe that the MoCADA has had an incredible impact in the greater arts community. Prior to founding MoCADA, it was not commonplace to visit the larger institutions and see works of art, performances, film festivals, etc., by or inspired by African Diaspora artists. Through our work, we have demonstrated that these artists have something very special to contribute in creating a comprehensive understanding of humanity and the cultural landscape. When I founded MoCADA, it was with the goal of creating an understanding of “one another” across all racial, class and social lines. The artists that we feature are of all races, addressing issues that impact us all ranging from gentrification and police brutality to rebuilding Haiti and capital punishment.
Many people enter art or politics to represent those who don’t always have a voice or the chance to speak up, bringing awareness of issues and sometimes even changing policy. Do you see more similarities or differences in the ways artists and government officials engage with their communities?
Excellent question. It draws a parallel that I have not quite made yet, but I thoroughly understand. The exhibitions and programs MoCADA curates utilize the creativity of the artist to speak for the community in a way that summarizes, through a work of art, how the community feels about a particular subject. The public programs allow the community to discuss a topic through discussion of the artwork – it is a way that is not as confrontational as directly discussing the topic. Politics require you to address the topic head-on, without the intermediary of the art/artist. As the future Council Member for the 35th Council District, I hope to utilize culture to bring people together and to then impart important messages to the community.
Do you see the relationships between art, community, politics and ‘place’ as adversarial, or more as a fluid exchange? How have you personally navigated all of these areas?
Art, community, and politics are one in the same for me, and I see myself as a vessel to connect these three powerful entities. I understand very clearly the needs of the community and how art can articulate those needs in order to create dialogue that transcends into government. Art is so real and it speaks for itself. It provokes dialogue and opposing views, and it is in that space that change can occur. That is what I look to foster and capture.
What role do you see artists and arts organizations playing in rapidly changing (and dare I say gentrifying) neighborhoods? Do they alleviate tensions and help solve problems, or do they contribute to the issues that divide communities?
Artists have always lived in communities that are now considered gentrified. This is more of a race issue than an arts issue. In predominantly black communities, there have always been artists and arts organizations that were working there to help build and grow the community. They were indigenous to the community, and were working to foster and cultivate the existing culture. Artists and arts organizations that are considered to be gentrifying the neighborhood are generally not from that community, and are mostly white (but not all). They are bringing a cultural aesthetic that is generally contemporary in nature, and outside of the cultural norm of the existing community. These artists/organizations then create a “cool” or “pop culture” environment that becomes attractive to developers who lack the tools and savvy to make something “cool” themselves. The developers then utilize their skills to “capitalize” on what was created. The “pop culture” environment sends a huge signal that the community must really be safe and that race relations must be stable, or else why would that community allow someone from a another race to create in that community so freely? This then opens up a gateway to gentrification.
Was the shift from founding a museum to running for office a natural one?
Running a not-for-profit museum requires one to have a very close relationship with government on the federal, state and city level in order to raise necessary funding on the expense and capital side as well as a close relationship with the many different agencies. It also requires one to have a love for the community and the people that comprise the community. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and my passion for the Borough and its people will be evident in everything that I put my mind to, from running a museum to running for Office.
Are you still a practicing artist?
I am not a practicing artist in the way of creating a visual work of art. I consider myself a curator of the community. I love to bring very different people together and challenge them to find their commonalities in order to discover solutions.
Laurie Angela Cumbo was born and raised in Brooklyn and attended Spelman College, Atlanta, GA, where she studied Fine Art. She received her MA in Visual Arts Administration from New York University in 1999. Cumbo is credited with developing the business plan for Brooklyn’s first Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), to assist in efforts to revitalize the Borough economically, socially and aesthetically. Cumbo has dedicated her life to community development and preserving the dynamic elements of diversity. She will next run for the office of City Council Member for the 35th Council District.
Martin McCormack
How did The Great New York City Mapping Project begin?
Very often people will come up to me in the street and say, “Martin, how is it you started your map project anyway?”
“Well,” I reply, “let me bring you back to that chilly day in November when it all started.” I straighten out an old half-finished cigarette, which I produce from my shirt pocket, and light it. Pulling deeply on the smoke, I begin: “You see,” I say, “I was walking through Bedford-Stuyvesant with my girlfriend and our mutual friend Chela Edmunds, when I saw an old restaurant menu lying on the ground. Now, rubbish on the ground is no rare thing, but this piece of rubbish had a little map, which intrigued me at the time. The map helped illustrate the exact location of the restaurant by showing a few blocks, the names of a couple of streets, and an arrow, as I’m sure you’re familiar with. Following a habit I had observed in my father, I put the piece of rubbish in my pocket.”
“The story, such as it is, might have ended right there at the pocketing of the menu, had I not found a second menu a little further along the road. This menu was from a different restaurant than the first. This menu also had a map, but it showed a slightly different area of town than the first, illustrating its different location. I found to my delight that when I put the two maps together they made a larger, contiguous area. I surmised, foolhardily, that if one were to walk the whole length and breadth of New York City, one may very well gather enough such maps to build a complete map of this vast metropolis.”
So The Great Map Project was born, and I have talked about little else since to the detriment of friends and strangers alike.
You must have walked countless miles, meeting a lot of people along the way.
I’ve no idea how many miles I’ve walked over the last three years to collect all the hundreds of maps that make up the collage, and the hundreds more I didn’t use for one reason or another. All of my routes are written down in the form of lists of addresses. I could enter them all into some kind of “Google maps thing”, and maybe it will tell me all the miles I’ve walked. It feels like more than 100 but less than 10,000 – somewhere in that range. I wish I had worn a pedometer. I hardly ever meet anybody, only when I’m in a good mood in a nice neighborhood, and not hungry or needing to pee or feeling shy and awkward, which is rare enough. I prefer to lurk, at first startling then bemusing the locals.
Have the conversations you have had with people you met along the way influenced your work?
I try to keep a written record of my experiences exploring the different neighborhoods. In this respect, the conversations I’ve had with people while collecting the maps have influenced the work. My natural inclination is to write about a neighborhood, like some kind of embittered but semi-literate P.J. O’Rourke. But after talking with people and getting to know a place a little better, this impulse is usually tempered. People are often good hearted and well meaning, or at least benign, and it’s not really their fault that they live in an ugly, disspiriting subdivision that is ill-conceived, unimaginative, and blighted through generations of social mismanagement. In the beginning of this project, I focused on the buildings and infrastructure. But a neighborhood is more about the people, and I’ve made an effort more recently to show that.
Do you feel like NYC is more of your home since you started this project, or does it make you feel more like an outsider?
I’ve always felt like a bit of an outsider wherever I’ve lived, and although it’s a cliché to say it, New York City is a very accepting place where you can be or do anything you like – provided you’re not bad at it. If you’re bad at it then this city is brutal. If I feel more at home here, it’s not through any new understanding of the city. Doing the mapping project, and exercises like this, has rather helped me understand myself and my place in the city. This is the first time that I’ve had to think about myself in terms of geography, so I suppose that’s a “yes.” This project has helped me feel more at home here.
A memorable encounter?
As I trudged along the still snow-covered sidewalk of Astoria Blvd., the temperature quite perceptively began to plunge. The filthy puddles of melted snow began to skin over with ice. The wind took my breath away, and I zipped my hood up like Kenny McCormack to keep out the cold. I could hardly hold my list of addresses for the cold, but a noble voice from within urged me forward. Would mere cold keep me from mapping Queens entire by the year’s end? Nonsense! Forward!
A seemingly senseless quirk of my route-planning process is that I rarely know en-route where it is I am going or what it is I am looking for. I found myself still walking down Astoria Blvd. long after the commercial and residential aspects of the road had abruptly ended and the four-lane highway began. As the cars and trucks blasted past me, I bleakly beheld what surely was my intended destination. On the right lay a snowy, forsaken graveyard, penned in between highways and with no entrance in sight. Cursing the day I was born, I skirted the fence until I found an entrance several hundred yards further along. Past rubble and building sites, past gravestones of dead Germans and Italians, the wind still bitterly blowing and the temperature dropping further, I walked towards a flagpole sensing that graveyard attendants gather under the colors of the US flag. I was right and I collected my prize – a map of St Michael’s cemetery. Beautiful, but unfortunately too big to use.
After pissing and uttering some gibberish to the kind ladies in the office, I took my leave whereupon, almost immediately, I got lost among the winding paths and German and Italian gravestones. I was about to turn back to the kind ladies when I met with the most extraordinary vision. Standing right there in front of me, blocking my way, was the most enormous white cockerel sporting a quite blood-red head. I stopped dead in my tracks. Astonished beyond all telling, I attempted to ascertain the amount of danger I may be in. The cockerel moved not one inch during this time except for his beady yellow eye, so I decided somewhat reluctantly that I could pass the creature without incident. Possessed now with calm sobriety, I saw that the creature was not as enormous as I had feared, but merely standing there in the tundra with its feathers puffed up for warmth. Why it should pick such a bleak and windy spot was beyond my reckoning, and as I was eager to leave such a place, beyond my patience. I took the vision of the cockerel with the blood-red head as some kind of portent, and decided to forego the rest of my damned list of addresses and make directly for home. And with my hackles raised I did just that.
Some time has passed since my meeting with the cock, and my thoughts do turn to it from time to time. Could it be that a cockerel lives wild here in New York, albeit not in a very fashionable part of the city? Or was the creature a figment of my imagination, brought on by the intense cold? Was its presence for good or for evil, or was it a neutral force existing for its own benefit and amusing itself by lurking eerily to frighten passersby? I suspect a simple phone call to those very nice ladies who so kindly helped me with the map would clear up most of these questions, but in God’s name, what would the fun be in that?
Originally from Liverpool, England, Martin McCormack is a Brooklyn-based artist who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ulster in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has produced “exhibitions” on various trees, walls, and embankments throughout New York City and in Colorado, in addition to exhibiting in a number of galleries including Leo Kesting Gallery, NY, and Five Myles Gallery,
Syreeta McFadden
What is the relationship between language, art, politics, and ‘place’ in your work?
I guess the best way to describe that relationship is integrated. Integral? I’m still trying to figure that one out. I don’t think I separate language of written word from visual representation. Both have a language and are in dialogue with one another. I think story is the key undercurrent to my work. I’m deeply interested in overlapping narratives that exist in communities, which is reflected in my use of overlapping forms in prose, poetry, and photography. The identity of place is a big part of my process, and is informed by my previous professional experience in urban planning and community development. In that work, the narratives that place or places carry were key to understanding the language, the collected memories of communities throughout the city. You cannot transform a neighborhood into your image, ignorant of the legacy a building or park carries with it in the imagination of the long-time residents of a community. And certainly, by extension, you can’t build or create new spaces ignorant of the social fabric and identity the community has embraced after years of change. Perhaps that’s where politics enters? Maybe.
Are publications and various media outlets part of your art form? How do these outlets differ from performance?
I’m one of the co-founders and editors of an online literary journal called Union Station. It’s strictly an online medium – no accompanying printed matter as of yet. When we created Union Station two years ago we were responding to a void that occurred in the literary world, a journal that presents a pluralist representation of writers in America. We wanted a forum to engage these narratives. Union Station is premised on the idea that every city (town) in America (and globally) has a Union Station, a main hub of activity and interconnectedness that by the happenstance of place, whole worlds of people connect and collide, and like a Venn diagram, in that overlap comes the story, the poem, the photograph…
I think the digital world can be performative too. We’re seeing a great deal of innovation and some back to the future elements (the GIF is dead! long live the GIF!). In the absence of live performance, we’re able to connect to a wider audience through internets, to capture or isolate moments in performance. I’m hoping to refine that idea some and play with the form of digital storytelling.
Live performance lends itself a different lens of discovery that’s so immediate between you and the audience. I don’t do enough of it. Last summer at a performance I did at The Kitchen to a majority Croatian-New Yorker audience, I really got the sense and feel of that wall break in an intensely shared moment of collective memory about American identity and otherness.
How important is community engagement in your work and how does it influence your art? What type of engagement or cultural exchange with the city itself do you practice?
I think community engagement with some of my projects is extremely important. I’m a photographer and co-curator of a public art experiment called PUP (Poets in Unexpected Places), where a group of poets, about 8 to 12 of us, go out on subway cars, the Staten Island Ferry, a laundromat, a public park and perform poetry in kind of a spontaneous/flash mob way. Poets literally pop-up and offer poems to an unsuspecting public, and in the words of Laurie Anderson, “snap them out of their art trances.” The surprise is that we find that people are often charmed, hungry, and eager to hear more poems. We’ve had poets of various ages, gender, and ethnicities appear with us over the past three years. We encourage interaction with the audience. There’s no false wall that sanctioned performance space mandates.
Additionally, a chunk of my work is collaborative, so I rely on my artistic community to act as collaborators, even ‘actors’ in the new photo work I’m developing as part of a newer project.
Any funny or interesting stories about a project?
As we were crossing the Manhattan Bridge on the Q train, during one of our PUP appearances, a group of women were so taken in and moved by the experience, that one of them jumped up and began singing and dancing. She was dressed traditionally, in a sari and didn’t speak English. The beautiful moment of discovery and connection is that it didn’t matter the language she spoke, but her heart connected to the words offered on the train in that moment. The largest lesson is that people connect in a language across culture and community in the lovely urban coincidence riding on the Q Train to disparate locations.
Can you describe the reciprocity in storytelling between you, your work, and the city?
I’m a creature of the city. Asphalt and blood. It’s a symbiotic relationship. It’s the source of a great deal of creative inspiration for me and probably the real driving force behind my earlier career in community development. Cities demand intersectional narratives to be fully realized in art. New York is the city where Basquiat agitated to crown black men kings, Ayn Rand found her fountainhead, and Joan Didion couldn’t stop herself from coming back. As an international city, more than any other place in America we witness the manifestation of a more perfect union (with her warts and all) by the shared common dream of living in this ridiculous crowded and expensive place because it’s in our blood. How could I not be interested in these stories and where we overlap? The typography of the city is so necessary to showing the world how and why we connect. I think the biggest takeaway for me in developing these stories written or visual is engagement. The city works as metaphor and talisman in the prose, and as witness in the photographs.
Syreeta McFadden is one of the founding editors of the online literary journal, Union Station. A former urban planner and housing development specialist, she holds degrees from Columbia University in the City of New York and Sarah Lawrence College, NY. Her writing has appeared in the The New York Times, Feministing, The Huffington Post, Salon and others. She has been a featured reader at various New York area readings series and her photographic work has been featured in local galleries and online. McFadden is an adjunct professor of English and Literature and is currently working on collections of short stories and essays.
Mark Reigelman
Why public art?
Every artist has a set of personal goals, interests, and needs that need to be satisfied. I want to have conversations with a greater audience, work on a large scale, research and experience new people and places, explore a variety of concepts and materials, and offer something unique to break up the monotony of everyday life. While studio work allows me to address some of these criteria specifically, public art is the only art form I have experienced that can address them as a whole. One particular interest that public art satisfies is my appreciation of community. Community is incredibly important to me personally, and thus a vital characteristic to my public works. This notion was reinforced early in my career by the book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, which highlights the ramifications of social interaction. My work discusses a variety of topics from westward expansion to overprotection, but is always founded by the importance of community. Public art, especially site-specific works, allows me to become intimate with a particular site, environment, and neighborhood members. Public art not only requires an artist but more importantly, a team of dedicated people that appreciate and celebrate artistic intervention in public space.
Your humor and personality is often seen in your work. How does interacting with the public influence this personality, and on future or current projects?
My work is really a direct reflection of my interests, humor and personality. In fact, I think a small portion of my soul is imbued in each work I create. I regularly recall the experiences of main character Basil Hallward in Oscar Wilde’s book The Picture of Dorian Gray, as he discusses his inability to exhibit his work. “I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”
For me, public art is a constant conversation and not a statement. Each project I create offers a specific and unique experience and is thoroughly documented and analyzed. If there was a particular interaction that was intriguing in one I will explore it in new ways in future projects.
Mark Reigelman: Stair Squares, 2008
What are the beginnings of the Stair Squares?
The original Stair Square proposal used the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the installation site. Unfortunately, months of emails and phone calls got me virtually nowhere. During this initial phase of the project I was still located in Cleveland, and at this same time period Christo and Jeanne Claude were lecturing at Severance Hall. I remember the presentation like it was yesterday: I was sitting in the balcony on the edge of my seat listening to the craziest and most inspiring lecture of my life. Afterwards, I approached Christo and Jeanne Claude, interrupting their socializing in the process, to talk to them about my project. Jeanne Claude listened to every sputtered word and looked at all the images I offered. She then wrote their fax number on a sheet a paper, and told me to fax her over the details the following week when they returned to New York. I did as she commanded, and within hours of my fax she replied with contact info for several curators at the Met and informed me that she already spoke with them about my project. In a matter if days, I was having serious discussions with the Met about the project. And while the Stair Square project was never installed on the famous Met steps (due to liability issues) this chance encounter with Christo and Jeanne Claude began the chain of events that led to the installation at Brooklyn Borough Hall. Their sincerity and generosity will never be forgotten.
Where are the Stair Squares now?
Since the Stair Squares were designed and fabricated specifically for the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall, there weren’t many options for their afterlife. So, after the installation all 12 went into storage in Downtown Brooklyn. They stayed there untouched for about five years. Then two were sent to a collector in Cleveland and one was sent to a collector in NYC. Sadly, the rest were taken to a metal recycling company in Brooklyn and turned into structural beams. Unfortunately the pieces in Cleveland have been discarded so the piece on display is the sole survivor from the original installation at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
How do you respond to the inherent temporariness, the politics of opinion, and bureaucracy of place that’s involved in public art?
I am not sure there is inherent temporariness in public art (at least not in the particular area of public art that I am engaged). In fact, most public art is designed to last a minimum of 25 years before any maintenance is needed. So, I would argue that the temporariness of public art is purely the impact and conversation it has with the individuals in the immediate community. Most permanent pieces end up becoming as overlooked as the surrounding architecture. I think it’s important for cities to have a balance of permanent and temporary pieces to ensure the public is constantly being challenged and engaged. I believe Public Art is about having a conversation and not making a statement. There is an excellent reading that pertains this this topic – One Place After Another: Site Specificity and Locational Identity by Miwon Kwon. It doesn’t talk particularly about temporariness, but it does discuss the importance for artists to consider the specific environment permanent works are placed in, to ensure that the conversation with the local community is valuable and important. This article is also an excellent transition to the political facet of public art. The public art process is saturated with bureaucracy, public opinion, city policies, and assortment of logistical constraints. But I embrace it all! At times it’s aggravating and painful – it’s a constant push and pull – but the challenge is what makes the work exciting. At the end of those months and years of diligent work and persistence, the project is realized and there is no greater feeling in the world (Except for space travel, I can assume that space travel is probably better).
Mark A. Reigelman II is a Brooklyn-based artist specializing in site-specific product design, installations, and public art. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Cleveland Institute of Art, OH, and an Advanced Product Design Certificate from the Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, UK. Reigelman’s work has been exhibited in public spaces, galleries, and museums across the country including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Port Authority Bus Terminal, NY, and Brooklyn Borough Hall.
