In Detroit, designers have an opportunity to realize their potential without the hindrance of legal obligation. This opportunity comes with great responsibility. We must be critical of the creative agents active in the city to determine who acts in the city's benefit and who takes advantage of its despair.
Design 99, the husband and wife team of Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope, have taken a formerly forclosed drug house purchased from the bank in 2008 for $1900 and spawned a neighborhood redevelopment strategy from their experience with its renovation. Their intention was to renovation the house keeping it off the grid and using artist initiatives and neighborhood participation as the volunteer workforce.
"The term Power House describes two functions. First, the house is a power creator meaning it produces its own electricity from solar and wind power with an the intention of powering an additional adjacent house -- thus creating a localized power grid. Second, the term implies a kind of taking control of ones own community by becoming an example of self reliance, sustainability and creative problem solving through education, communication and increased diversification of the neighborhood. In all a place that symbolizes hopefulness and curiosity by integrating a complex web of social and artistic ideas into a neighborhood that might otherwise end up into a typical cycle of decay and criminality."
Through the PowerHouse Project, Design 99 has developed a plan for the future development of their neighborhood which is quite extensive and promises a rich and vibrant community rooted in sustainability, design, and public well being. You can read the plans for future development here.
Although the Power House has been critically focused and designed, thanks in part to the participation of a architectural team from the Netherlands, 2012 Architects, many of the associated neighborhood homes which have been taken over by the artists collective which has centered around the project are less critically informed.
The brightly painted colors and eccentrically designed fencing and landscape which illuminate the Power House and point to its drastic efforts at environmental neutrality have been hijacked in the subsequent artists houses and stripped of their poignant association. The spectacle remains, but the message has gone.
With a critical eye and a little editing, the whole PowerHouse neighborhood would have the potential to become a generative planning model for the city.
I would like to say thank you to Presentation Concepts Corporation of Syracuse, NY for donating the use of two projectors for the current exhibition we are holding at the Community Folk Art Center. They are a wonderful team, and I would highly recommend them for any of your audio visual needs.
I have been ardently working on an exhibition with a group of art students at Syracuse University entitled "You Are Here." The exhibition explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar entitled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown and David A. Ross, the former director of The Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, currently Chairman of the MFA in Art Practice at the School of Visual arts in New York City.
The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.
The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video, and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines. My piece deals specifically with the issues addressed in the blog.
If you are in Syracuse please come see the show. The 22nd is a closing ceremony with performances, wine and cheese!
Community Folk Art Center: 805 E. Genesee St., Syracus Friday April 8 - Friday, April 22, 2011
One tweeter posts a random challenge to Mayor Bing, and it sets off one of the most engaged, vibrant, and often heated discussions about public art the city has ever held.
I have tried to outline the discussion for you below so that you can form your own opinions about the piece. I think my view is clear about this type of work which neither proposes a solution nor forces us to question our perception of or role in the greater community and how those perceptions and actions are affecting the space in which we live.
1. It is insulting to Detroit and to Detroiters who have lived here through the worst. The reason Detroit is the setting for Robocop is because the city is considered a hellhole. Robocop may be a man/machine who overcomes injustice, but the Detroit in that movie is no compliment. The statue would serve as a perpetual reminder that Detroit holds the distinction of being the most believable dystopia in America.
2. It's disrespectful to the police. As if there is any better symbol of a dysfunctional police force than Robocop. Good luck with your 911 response times with that statue in your front yard.
3. It's hypocritical. A major plot point in the movie is that the new “Delta City” would be built over the crime-ridden “Old Detroit.” The movie's plot does pivot on the actions of corrupt corporate overlords, but Robocop remains a tool of the corporate powers at the end. The need for a new Delta City is never in doubt.
The fact that the Imagination Station is involved is of particular interest, since co-founder and president Jeff DeBruyn has been so very vocal in the recent gentrification fear-mongering in the Corktown area (a notion that was nicely debunked by the Free Press editorial page and mlive.com's Jeff Wattrick last month). Apparently it's ok to celebrate a movie that takes for granted the need for a most severe kind of gentrification in Detroit, but it's problematic when middle-class people move into a middle-class neighborhood.
Incidentally, the Detroit Works project posted “Love that Robocop trended out yesterday” on their Facebook fan page. They need to think really hard about the decision to enter into this discussion, since they are teetering on the perception of being Omni Consumer Products, the corporation responsible for making the New Detroit in the movie, themselves.
4. It proves Martha Reeves was right. When she was elected to office a major part of her agenda was to have statues of Motown stars placed around town. She said it would make people feel good. She was rightly ridiculed for this, because what Detroit needs is substantive change, not feel-good gestures, even if it is statues of actual Detroiters who made significant cultural contributions.
Of course a statue of a fictional character, conceived and created 2000 miles away from Detroit, is a great idea and if you don't like it then you should prepare yourself to be labeled a buzzkill.
5. It's the outsider's answer to the Joe Louis fist. There is a vocal group of people who can never move past the notion that the Joe Louis fist statue is a defiant gesture aimed at the suburbs, a constant reminder in the heart of downtown that they think they were told to “hit 8 Mile Road” by a Detroit mayor.
A Robocop statue, with money that will no doubt be raised primarily from outside the city limits, can be seen as the constant reminder (potentially right in the middle of one of our more vibrant neighborhoods) that Detroit will never move past its reputation as hopelessly corrupt and crime-ridden. And will be celebrated by many more non-residents than residents, for sure. Way to put a city in its place.
6. It's derivative. Public art can be hit or miss, but even when it doesn't quite work it demonstrates the creativity of a community and the openness of a population to those creative endeavors.
Placing a statue of a movie character shows little creativity, and it actually flagrantly uses somebody else's intellectual property, whether or not this particular use is legally copyrighted. It may be clever, or even ironic, in its placement, but at the end of the day it's not art.
7. It's a waste of money and manpower. The Kickstarter project seeks to raise $50,000 to make this statue. I don't doubt that is a reasonable estimate of costs for materials and manpower, and possibly administrative costs. But in a city like Detroit where $50k can make such a difference, is this really the best way to use that kind of cash? And doesn't it really squander the talents of people who could be involved in better, more creative pursuits?
Or what about projects to help the destitute in Corktown so they can get real help instead of feeling displaced from a public park?
8.It's low culture. Sure, Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky, and Milwaukee has the Bronze Fonz. But honestly, is that what we are going for? Stupid tourist attractions that appeal to connoisseurs of lowest culture? I'd argue that this is one “us too!” moment we can live without.
9.It's opportunist. The initial Tweet to the Mayor's office was a joke, and possibly the biggest error in this whole thing was the fact that someone in the Mayor's office actually deigned to reply to it (props again to Jeff Wattrick for that observation). But now it's become the movement of the moment, and it just seems a bit opportunist to take ownership of the idea.
It certainly will be plenty of publicity for the Imagination Station whether this gets funded or not – heck, they're already on Detroit Public Radio today to talk about it. Then again, maybe that's the idea? In which case Jerry Paffendorf (whom I like very much personally, by the way) continues to prove himself one of the savviest marketers in the Detroit area.
10.It will add an entirely new dimension to train station ruin porn. Tired of pictures of the Michigan Central Station? If this goes up in front of the Imagination Station, located across the street from the train station, you can expect to be seeing a lot more MCS ruin porn in the years to come.
One undeniably good thing that has come from the debate:
"The focus of the Heidelberg Project is rooted in the need to improve the under-resourced and horribly blighted Detroit community where the project was founded.
We continue this mission, as we began, by providing hope and inspiration to local children through art and education programs and hands-on workshops.
The HP works with neighborhood children to educate them on art, community and environment. These children walk to school past burned-out houses, rubble, debris, crime and decay. Our purpose is to offer them another view, another perspective - to positively change the environment the children see every day. In the process, we help build self-esteem, encourage cooperation and foster a sense of pride in their community. The HP continues to work with local students throughout Metro Detroit through the ACE2 program and guided tours."
images from:the heidelberg project: home sweet home
Dustin Downing
The Heidelberg Project is one of Detroit's most famous public works of art. It has been lauded for transforming the area in which it operates, making it a much safer neighborhood, and for inspiring the creation of ACE2 which works with local student's to supplement their educations with art related curriculum. As a believer in collective public art, I can get behind the motives for creating the HP. I understand how painting polka dots on an abandoned building somehow makes it less frightening and affixing stuffed animals softens the facade of a burnt out home and makes it more tolerable. I have to question, however, how this kind of art which draws attention to the problem with out proposing a sustainable solution really effects the quality of life in the city. Yes, the Heidelberg is safer, but only because we have made a spectacle out of the problem. The captivated tourist is staring at amazement at the same type of pornographic imagery he or she sees in Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre's Ruins of Detroit. In Detroit, at this moment, anything may be, possible; however, we have a responsibility as designers to consider the impression our work makes on the city and its power to act as a catalyst for change and not as a neon sign pointing to its problems.
