Tagged: art
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.
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.
Cultural Fluency: Engagements with Contemporary Brooklyn
Presented by BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn, the exhibition Cultural Fluency: Engagements with Contemporary Brooklyn takes place March 14 – April 27, 2013 at BRIC Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Below is the curator’s essay to the exhibition’s newspaper/catalogue:
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“For the artist, obtaining cultural fluency is a dialectical process which, simply put, consists of attempting to affect the culture while he is simultaneously learning from (and seeking acceptance of) the same culture which is affecting him.”
– Joseph Kosuth, “The Artist as Anthropologist,” 1975
Cultural Fluency: Engagements with Contemporary Brooklyn brings together six artists whose active and purposeful engagements with the city embody its culture. The exhibition is part of a wider dialogue examining the creative exchange between urbanism and art practice. In the spirit of Cultural Fluency, this newspaper/exhibition catalogue includes conversations with the artists as well as with contributors from different fields.
The exhibition, ranging from public artwork and photography to “guerrilla opera bombs”, highlights artwork that depicts Brooklyn while also altering our perceptions of and experiences in the borough. The artists featured all regularly operate at the intersections of art, place, and community, often with an innate political awareness.
Working in response to the exhibition concept and the gallery space itself, David Court’s text-based work, A Description Without Place & A Glossary for Other Spaces, expands throughout the gallery walls, exhibition postcards, and this newspaper. In a playful yet strategic manner, Court draws attention to the multiple forces at work in the production of space, specifically addressing the materiality of BRIC Rotunda Gallery, the layout and experience of the exhibition, and its implication in larger frames of building and inhabitation.
From Here I Saw What Happened and I Could Not Understand (aka The Obama Skirt Project) is a year-long performance artwork by Aisha Cousins during which she vowed to wear fabrics bearing President Obama’s image every day. The fabrics were collected shortly after Obama’s election in 2008 from Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, South Africa, and Tanzania, where there is a long tradition of depicting the faces of black political leaders on clothing. She wore the Obama fabrics until her friends and neighbors began to see them (and the mind-set they represented) as normal. Cousins documented her experiences by writing a series of performance art scores. The piece expanded into the creation of a group called The Story Skirt Project, whereby participants re-perform Cousins’ work by wearing Obama fabric and documenting their own stories.
Vocal artist Malesha Jessie challenges the notion of ‘authenticity’ in opera performance being tied to a ‘legitimate’ venue and audience. Her guerrilla opera bombs in the barbershops, bodegas, stoops, and sidewalks in Bedford-Stuyvesant engage a surprised public who pause to listen and even spontaneously dance to her performances. The 8-minute video loop Guerrilla Opera is presented openly, allowing the film’s music to permeate the gallery space and alter the experience of viewing nearby artworks.
Hiroki Kobayashi’s photographs of the endangered Slave Theater, once a hub for civil rights activities in New York, uncover a history that is at risk of being buried. Abandoned for years and at the center of a bitter dispute over ownership rights and competing visions for a neighborhood landmark, the theater’s future is uncertain. By re-presenting the politicized murals inside the iconic building in a new gallery context, Kobayashi re-introduces the soul of the theater and its history to an expanded demographic, possibly affecting its future.
For over three years British artist Martin McCormack has been walking the length and breadth of New York City, gathering tattered subway maps, tourist maps, and maps found on take-out menus. An active interplay between commerce, leisure, location, and art practice, The Great New York City Mapping Project is a dynamic re-creation of the city, in graphic form.
Mark Reigelman’s Stair Squares is a response to ongoing activities on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall while actively altering the space. The collection of public furniture accentuates and encourages the use of the public steps as a grand civic stoop. Presented on a custom-built stoop for the exhibition, visitors are welcome to sit and linger, shifting their perspective and becoming part of the exhibition.
The exhibition is conversational and participatory not only by engaging the public in the gallery space itself, but by expanding the dialogue through its communication materials. Newspaper contributors Laurie Cumbo, Matthew Deleget, Karen Demavivas, Keith Gill, Thomas Leeser, Syreeta McFadden, and Hanne Tierney discuss the relationships between politics, community, architecture, poetry, and performance with their art and with the city.
On Thursday, April 4, 2013, Inside Cultural Fluency extends the dialogue further. The public program night features Q&As with the artists and the Bed-Stuy Story Skirters (a group of Brooklyn women who have been re-performing Aisha Cousins’ The Obama Skirt Project), as well as interactive performance art scores directed by Cousins.
The public is invited to visit and participate in the online forum culturalfluency. info, whereby Cultural Fluency will continue to grow beyond the confines of a gallery exhibition. By regularly including new interviews and conversations across fields and globally, the blog will continue to examine the creative exchange between the city and art practice. At the risk of being utopian, it is my hope Cultural Fluency will help our understanding of the human condition in our city and in our society – essentially shaping our ‘place’.
– Erin Gleason, Exhibition Curator
Erin Gleason is an artist, curator, and designer based in Brooklyn. She studied Fine Art, Imaging Science, and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and received her MFA in the Art/Space/Nature Program at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Gleason has exhibited and curated in the U.S. and internationally and has created works for a variety of public sites. She is the co-founder/director of the Crown Heights Film Festival, co-editor and designer of the publication FIELDWORK (ASN Mutual Press), recipient of a Russell Trust Award for research in Greenland, and a 2013 Lori Ledis Emerging Curator Fellow at BRIC Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
