7: Making Visible

As John made his daily commute to work, the light turned red on Jones Street, as usual.  Coming to a stop, he went through his usual routine of reaching down for his iphone to check his messages.  this time however, something caught the corner of his eye through his windshield.  Over to the left on a lamppost, someone had posted a banner with a picture of a dead squirrel.  "Who would put up such a revolting image?" John asked himself.  "Nobody wants to see road kill displayed out in public like that1"  As the light turned green, John cursed to himself and finished his commute to work.  He relayed his encounter to his fellow employees, eliciting common responses of "ewww!" "gross!" and "nasty!" among others.  This water cooler talk was soon forgotten as the workday droned on, and after another tedious eight hour day, John began the long commute home.  As he turned off Jones Street and headed towards the highway, John noticed a dead cat on the shoulder of the road, obviously hit by a vehicle.  "Hmph, these animals should watch where they're going on a busy street like this" he thought.  john soon entered the on-ramp for the highway, and after a couple of miles, he noticed a dead deer laying on the side of the road.  As he continued on his drive home, he felt like he was bombarded with casualties: a dead possum in the middle of the road, a dog off to the shoulder, and too many squirrels to keep count.  John soon reached his exit and slowed down to make the final turn towards home.  As he paused at the bottom of the exit ramp, he noticed squirrels running across the branches of a nearby tree, running back an forth, up and down gathering nuts and morsels from the ground and bringing them back up the tree to nibble on.  John heard a car horn behind him, and realized he had been sitting at the stop sign longer than he realized.  He turned right and, and after a few more turns had reached his home.  Sitting in his driveway, John thought about the events of the day and had an epiphany about the banner he had seen that morning, and began to understand the message it was trying to convey.  We humans share our spaces with these animals.  In fact, we have invaded their space and homes to make room for our own, with little regard for them.  Maybe we should have the courtesy and decency to keep an eye out for them and their well-being as we travel the streets and highways we have built through their natural spaces.

Images courtesy of:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbaron/16655595/

http://www.klimages.com/stock/animals/roadkill/small01.htm




 

6: Critical Public Art Pedagogy

Looking over the artworks from this lesson, I was first impressed by Urban Omnibus and the Geologic City.  The using up of geologic material and laying down of new strata provides a metaphor for the passing of time and our simultaneous connection with the past, present and future.  I was also interested in how our layers of garbage can be viewed as representing our culture, and the question can be asked: what does this mean for our culture? The way buildings are constantly being torn down and demolished to build new structures on the same site is an example of palimpsest.  Architecture is "scraped away" and construction materials composed of elements from the distant past are used in the constructions and reconstructions of new works, providing an overlapping of time in addition to physical materials.

I also enjoyed the EcoArtTech site, specifically the idea of Indeterminate Hikes.  In our fast-paced world of information overload, it is important for one's physical and spiritual health to find spaces where one can slow down and contemplate nature as well as the overlapping terrains of psychological and environmental ecologies. In one of our downtown schools here in Durham, NC, there are green spaces and gardens incorporated into the campus and time is set aside to allow students the opportunity to play and contemplate, and perhaps more importantly, collaborate in the design and use of these areas.  Murals adorn the walls of the school, and various sculptures using recycled materials can be seen around the schoolyard, all created in a collaboration between the students, parents, and teachers.

Image from Central Park School for Children site: http://cpscnc.org/



 After exploring EcoArtTech, I immediately thought this could be incorporated into a project or lesson plan.  While the cost of providing Android devices to students may be something out of reach, perhaps students could be provided with disposable cameras or share a digital camera in order to take pictures of an "urban wilderness" or an architectural layer as mentioned in Geologic City. These photos can then be combined in a collage or layered to produce an overlapping of time and image, and discussed with the students as being metaphors for our culture, among other things.

This week, I came across some images that incorporated many of the ideas we have been discussing.  A Swiss photographer, Corinne Vionnet, has created a series of photographic works entitled 'Photo Opportunities', taking hundreds of photos of famous landmarks found on the Internet and layering them successively to produce images that invoke questions about memory and the passage of time. Here are a couple of examples, and a link to the collection: http://www.corinnevionnet.com/index.php?/photo-opportunities/

Images from www.corinnevionnnet.com