There is so much I have to reflect on. I hope I get to everything. I will begin though, with a presentation that Bob gave us in class. It was about a public art project that he worked on, where there would be projections on a building, while voices played from a soundtrack to accompany it. He recreated this presentation (without the projections) but nonetheless, it was still powerful. It was a conversation between Lisa, a woman who lost her son to a tragic, unwarranted violent act, and an inmate from jail, responding to her (this wasn’t the guy who killed her son of course). It really had an effect on me. As Bob was reading her statements, you could hear (through his voice) her anguish…her confusion…her anger. That really hit a soft spot for me. After having lost two friends in the past months and one while I was in high school…my grief resurged. I couldn’t help but think about Travis Davis…. How I heard on the news that a man was found lying in the bushes, shot to death in Roseland (the housing apartments in the industrial park down the street from my neighborhood)….how I came to school Monday morning to see all of the forlorn faces, asking why everyone was so upset. Although I didn’t know him that well…I knew him... and I knew he got shot for reasons unknown to any of us. It’s funny, reflecting back on Upskit, he talks about how he can walk through the most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation, in the dead of night, and not be threatened by violence. As we walked through Wellston, I couldn’t help but get this feeling, I think we all had as students…”it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.” But there is some truth to the matter. Violence is real, and while it is not specific to these “bad neighborhoods,” it is still a prevailing cloud that hangs over them. Looking at the videos of City Faces, and hearing Bob talk about all of the students he’s lost… HELL, even to hear about those kids who were shot up just the other day in the Peabodies...how does one cope? It brings about that double-edged sword we talked about in class… being too emotionally distant will lead to apathy and lethargy... being too emotionally attached will result in constant blows to one’s psyche. I guess you have to find that happy medium.
Speaking about public art…the question arises. Why do something like this? Why did Bob have to put Lisa’s story on the side of the freaking Library downtown? Why is “Twain” by Serra still in existence, even though someone spray painted on it...”Get rid of this.” Who does it serve? Who does it agitate? One interview that we read traces the history of Public Art back to the Kennedy administration to maintain morale during the Cold War… but those days are over… yet public art is everywhere. In one sense it is to make the environment more aesthetic (as if trees and flowers and general nature are not enough now). But why does one need art? It is a hallmark of our culture, and from the anthropological perspective you can trace art back to our early hominid days when we made brilliant cave paintings and rock sculpture. But why? That is a question I don’t know the answer to... but it is an interesting one to ponder. Art has numerous purposes: religion, secular aestheticism, design purposes. But it is also up to one’s perception (as one of our quotes so lovely put it). But who’s perception is valued enough to determine whether an art piece is installed, maintained or removed. It is obviously not the public’s (as the roots of public art are grounded in the government being the catalyzing force for public art projects in the ‘60’s). That is where I believe the notion of power comes in. To make a decision such as that one, one must be powerful (and no…power does cannot be reduced to mere affluence). There is much more to it than that. For instance (and this is pure speculation), but when the Kennedy administration first thought to install public art to improve national morale… I wonder which gender was predominant in making those decisions….probably the male gender... for the simple fact that in that time period, and even before then, social constructions, ideas, and behaviors made it easier for them to inhabit the hegemonic power position in the gender binary hierarchy… Where there transgendered people making this decisions? Definitely not, because they didn’t even fit into the gender-binary…not even included in this hegemonic discourse. This notion of power extends beyond gender…to ability status, to economic status, to sexual orientation, to race and class. The Serra sculpture, for instance, was commissioned by the Pulitzer family as a gift to St. Louis (obviously they are white and rich, and therefore powerful). This power is manifested not only in their placement in those dominant social groups, but also because the city cannot remove the structure. One family gives a gift to the city that the city cannot remove! Theoretically, the city as a governing body should govern its constituents…but this relationship is inverted in this instance! Sheer power. It seems certainly obvious to me.
I digress, however, to talking about housing, yet again. I gave a reference in previous posting, likening African Americans to Jews in the Ghetto’s (which I believe is the root of what is now referred to as the “urban Ghetto”). I wondered how can this just…happen? How is it that the Peabodies, for instance, can be erected as temporary housing for white immigrants, but becomes a literal cage for African-Americans? In these quote given to us, it describes restrictive covenants which prevented blacks from living in certain neighborhoods (something not related only to St. Louis, as I have learned that the historically affluent neighborhoods in my home city also had restrictive covenants explicitly stated on the housing deeds). These neighborhoods were constructed to be this way. As the instructors told us…there were no “low income neighborhoods” back in the day. It is a relatively modern invention…and what trips me up is that there was a conscious effort to do so. Real Estate agents consciously maintain racial/ethnic concentrated neighborhoods when people are in the market to buy. And how interesting it is that they play to the minority middle class’s yearnings to move on “to something better”. I’ll admit, I have always “wanted something better” (as I spoke about in my first posting). What does that mean? And why is it that that “something better” is often conflated with white hetero-normative, upper class ideals? It is an interesting question. “Better”, just like public art, is entirely up to perception. Unlike public art, however, there is a general social consensus that “better” is just what I said, and we fail to realize that it too is socially constructed. On another bus tour for my scholarship program, the guide asked us, “Why is it that houses keep being built, even though the population isn’t growing as fast as they are being built?” Indeed, I am sure there are more houses out there than there are families to inhabit them. It generates a flow of people… that planned obsolescence that we spoke about last class. And to think that general migratory patterns of patterns can be often racially motivated (based upon fear). I was watching a movie where a con man doubly took advantage of this fear. He employed a black family (who had no where to live) to move into and rent apartments in traditionally white neighborhoods (which is capitalizing on the need of the black family, while exploiting them). He would then pose as a person looking to buy apartments. He would target the little old, white ladies, who upon finding out a “nigger family” moved in, would see their apartment cheaply and move out. The man would then move the black family to another residence, repeating the same cycle, selling both apartments for a profit. It’s funny…yet sad… Fear is a powerful emotion that drives us... It drives us to succeed... it drives us not to faThere is so much I have to reflect on. I hope I get to everything. I will begin though, with a presentation that Bob gave us in class. It was about a public art project that he worked on, where there would be projections on a building, while voices played from a soundtrack to accompany it. He recreated this presentation (without the projections) but nonetheless, it was still powerful. It was a conversation between Lisa, a woman who lost her son to a tragic, unwarranted violent act, and an inmate from jail, responding to her (this wasn’t the guy who killed her son of course). It really had an effect on me. As Bob was reading her statements, you could hear (through his voice) her anguish…her confusion…her anger. That really hit a soft spot for me. After having lost two friends in the past months and one while I was in high school…my grief resurged. I couldn’t help but think about Travis Davis…. How I heard on the news that a man was found lying in the bushes, shot to death in Roseland (the housing apartments in the industrial park down the street from my neighborhood)….how I came to school Monday morning to see all of the forlorn faces, asking why everyone was so upset. Although I didn’t know him that well…I knew him... and I knew he got shot for reasons unknown to any of us. It’s funny, reflecting back on Upskit, he talks about how he can walk through the most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation, in the dead of night, and not be threatened by violence. As we walked through Wellston, I couldn’t help but get this feeling, I think we all had as students…”it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.” But there is some truth to the matter. Violence is real, and while it is not specific to these “bad neighborhoods,” it is still a prevailing cloud that hangs over them. Looking at the videos of City Faces, and hearing Bob talk about all of the students he’s lost… HELL, even to hear about those kids who were shot up just the other day in the Peabodies...how does one cope? It brings about that double-edged sword we talked about in class… being too emotionally distant will lead to apathy and lethargy... being too emotionally attached will result in constant blows to one’s psyche. I guess you have to find that happy medium.
Speaking about public art…the question arises. Why do something like this? Why did Bob have to put Lisa’s story on the side of the freaking Library downtown? Why is “Twain” by Serra still in existence, even though someone spray painted on it...”Get rid of this.” Who does it serve? Who does it agitate? One interview that we read traces the history of Public Art back to the Kennedy administration to maintain morale during the Cold War… but those days are over… yet public art is everywhere. In one sense it is to make the environment more aesthetic (as if trees and flowers and general nature are not enough now). But why does one need art? It is a hallmark of our culture, and from the anthropological perspective you can trace art back to our early hominid days when we made brilliant cave paintings and rock sculpture. But why? That is a question I don’t know the answer to... but it is an interesting one to ponder. Art has numerous purposes: religion, secular aestheticism, design purposes. But it is also up to one’s perception (as one of our quotes so lovely put it). But who’s perception is valued enough to determine whether an art piece is installed, maintained or removed. It is obviously not the public’s (as the roots of public art are grounded in the government being the catalyzing force for public art projects in the ‘60’s). That is where I believe the notion of power comes in. To make a decision such as that one, one must be powerful (and no…power does cannot be reduced to mere affluence). There is much more to it than that. For instance (and this is pure speculation), but when the Kennedy administration first thought to install public art to improve national morale… I wonder which gender was predominant in making those decisions….probably the male gender... for the simple fact that in that time period, and even before then, social constructions, ideas, and behaviors made it easier for them to inhabit the hegemonic power position in the gender binary hierarchy… Where there transgendered people making this decisions? Definitely not, because they didn’t even fit into the gender-binary…not even included in this hegemonic discourse. This notion of power extends beyond gender…to ability status, to economic status, to sexual orientation, to race and class. The Serra sculpture, for instance, was commissioned by the Pulitzer family as a gift to St. Louis (obviously they are white and rich, and therefore powerful). This power is manifested not only in their placement in those dominant social groups, but also because the city cannot remove the structure. One family gives a gift to the city that the city cannot remove! Theoretically, the city as a governing body should govern its constituents…but this relationship is inverted in this instance! Sheer power. It seems certainly obvious to me.
I digress, however, to talking about housing, yet again. I gave a reference in previous posting, likening African Americans to Jews in the Ghetto’s (which I believe is the root of what is now referred to as the “urban Ghetto”). I wondered how can this just…happen? How is it that the Peabodies, for instance, can be erected as temporary housing for white immigrants, but becomes a literal cage for African-Americans? In these quote given to us, it describes restrictive covenants which prevented blacks from living in certain neighborhoods (something not related only to St. Louis, as I have learned that the historically affluent neighborhoods in my home city also had restrictive covenants explicitly stated on the housing deeds). These neighborhoods were constructed to be this way. As the instructors told us…there were no “low income neighborhoods” back in the day. It is a relatively modern invention…and what trips me up is that there was a conscious effort to do so. Real Estate agents consciously maintain racial/ethnic concentrated neighborhoods when people are in the market to buy. And how interesting it is that they play to the minority middle class’s yearnings to move on “to something better”. I’ll admit, I have always “wanted something better” (as I spoke about in my first posting). What does that mean? And why is it that that “something better” is often conflated with white hetero-normative, upper class ideals? It is an interesting question. “Better”, just like public art, is entirely up to perception. Unlike public art, however, there is a general social consensus that “better” is just what I said, and we fail to realize that it too is socially constructed. On another bus tour for my scholarship program, the guide asked us, “Why is it that houses keep being built, even though the population isn’t growing as fast as they are being built?” Indeed, I am sure there are more houses out there than there are families to inhabit them. It generates a flow of people… that planned obsolescence that we spoke about last class. And to think that general migratory patterns of patterns can be often racially motivated (based upon fear). I was watching a movie where a con man doubly took advantage of this fear. He employed a black family (who had no where to live) to move into and rent apartments in traditionally white neighborhoods (which is capitalizing on the need of the black family, while exploiting them). He would then pose as a person looking to buy apartments. He would target the little old, white ladies, who upon finding out a “nigger family” moved in, would see their apartment cheaply and move out. The man would then move the black family to another residence, repeating the same cycle, selling both apartments for a profit. It’s funny…yet sad… Fear is a powerful emotion that drives us... It drives us to succeed... it drives us not to fail…it motivates our every decision (consioucly or unconsciously). We live in a “post racial society” yet these modes of city migration, and the races chasing each other in and out of the city, in a cicadic manner continues to exist. It is irony, but also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Well, that’s my rant. Until Next Time!il…it motivates our every decision (consioucly or unconsciously). We live in a “post racial society” yet these modes of city migration, and the races chasing each other in and out of the city, in a cicadic manner continues to exist. It is irony, but also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Well, that’s my rant. Until Next Time!
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