Memory, Objects and Location

Visiting the three exhibitions, I began to think about the idea of stories and memories being as important for their content as what is left out.

In the Tenement Museum, the elephant in the room was that the apartments were facsimiles of the actual experience, supported by historical artifacts, some oral history and research, but not totally true to their lives. When I was there on a field trip with the Cabinets of Wonder class last semester, we had the other guide leading our tour which led to an actress embodying one of the former residents. I found that experience way more enjoyable because it felt more real to see a person “living” in the space to simply be told what it was like. At the Brooklyn Historical Society, I found myself drawn more to the artifacts hidden in the binders than the actual voices because of what was left out. I was definitely more negative in my feelings about the City Reliquary. It seemed like a museum of kitsch and I felt removed from it compared to the other two that resonated more.

Thinking of my midterm response, I immediately gravitated towards using my thesis project because it’s all about using personal stories and photographs to paint a picture of a Brooklyn that is lost physically and psychologically now. As spring break went on, I was reading Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger and thinking about the story heard at BHS of the man who went to visit the family of his fellow soldier who died in Vietnam. I also remembered in high school where my drama class made short plays out of the epitaphs in Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Master. I then turned my thoughts to doing a project on something more personal for me that I have been thinking about and working on as my thesis has kicked into gear.

When I originally thought of my thesis, I was considering using the idea to explore my own family history/memories. My father’s side of the family is gigantic, spread from here in New York throughout the country. Gatherings are large, loud, and confusing affairs because everyone tells stories about things that happened years ago that are fuzzy to them even. But there are some stories and people who are barely mentioned except in hushed tones and one of those has always resonated with me when the bare details. In my father’s childhood, my grandfather’s young newly divorced sister had moved from Mississippi with her children to start a new life here in Brooklyn. From what I’ve heard, she was enjoying a newly single life in an infinitely bigger place than Buford, MS and took to going out to party and drink with new friends. One night, she went missing and then turned up assaulted and murdered in an abandoned lot. Her attacker was never found and her kids were picked up by their father to go back to Mississippi and eventually moved to Las Vegas where they still live. From what I know, it was a majorly traumatizing event in the family and the cousins who moved away also became a shadowy presence in my father’s life since they rarely if ever came to NYC again.

In my midterm (and final), I want to explore through a fictional work a version of this story told through 1st person narratives. My characters are the sister, daughter, nephew, and granddaughter of the woman plus the case detective and a reporter who is the catalyst for bringing the story back to the surface. I’m considering turning it into a video piece for the final, but right now I’m just focused on writing it all out.

Another Final Turn

I’m definitely the type of person who can end up help hostage by my creative impulses — or lack thereof. In the past few months of constantly thinking about my thesis, I’ve had so much indecision and shifts that it’s been hard not to feel frustrated at every turn. But finally, lightning has struck and all that is behind me.

Where I last left off was deciding to give the focus on Brownsville and the ’77 Blackout a shot. I did a lot of research and read a lot of interesting things, but the topic wasn’t really sparking my imagination. I thought a lot about what was missing from there that made it so uninteresting compared to my ideas of last semester. It started to feel like I’d gone too far in the direction of straight research and made the topic to abstract for me to care about. Sure, I know people who were born/raised/lived in Brownsville (i.e. most of my father’s side of the family at one point in the 60s/70s) and that also were here for the Blackout, but what I actually care(d) about in the stories surrounding that and my idea of a community based project are the memories of individuals.

I took some time to go way back to my first idea and mind map of the community museum idea.

I focused on the words that jumped out at me: exploration, pride, history, explanation, sharing, knowledge, mosaic, local, multigenerational. What I care about in my project collecting stories and weaving together something bigger than its parts. Perhaps where I went wrong was the focus on the site specific physical. The take that I plan to go with until the end is the creation of a site called The Brooklyn Memory Map. It will be an audiovisual collection of individual stories tied to places, either long forgotten or gone that influenced the lives of people in Brooklyn. I’m starting with my native family and friends in the initial stage and then soliciting widely stories. This is something I care about and want to see be amazing. After all this time, I think I finally have it.

Inertia

I’m officially stuck in mud on my thesis work.

Last week, I had a slight blast of inspiration and decided to shift my focus to the Blackout of 1977 and the effects on the commercial strips/neighborhoods of Brownsville and where Bushwick/Bed Stuy meet on Broadway. I researched articles, got books, and have been trying to work on an angle ever since. Oral histories? Am I still doing site specific things? What could they look like? Am I incorporating visuals/sound? Where will they be? What am I doing? Do I even have time to still be spinning my wheels?

I need a massive shove in some direction is the only thing I’m sure of at the moment.

Lost In Translation

My greatest enemy right now is time. If I was going to go fully dramatic — hard not to be when seeing the timeline to D-Day a.k.a. Thesis Week on the first day of class. We’ve basically got 6 weeks of doing before it’s time to start presenting (and moderately defending) the idea. I’m officially terrified, especially since my motivation has kind of stalled in confusion the past couple of weeks.

The idea I want to tackle and love right now is the Brooklyn History map site. On my first day of spring classes, the assignment for Collective Storytelling was to reveal a little bit about yourself in front of the class and then with a partner. Most of the second years focused on their thesis work. I’ve been basically talking about my idea to any and everyone over the break, but I still was a little nervous (and eyes averting) talking about it in that class. It all came out ridiculously muddled and I used my partner time to talk about my inspiration for wanting to do it: the local history workbook I got in elementary school that seriously changed my whole worldview of my neighborhood. Though I thought we had discussed it well enough in our allotted time, when it came time for my partner to relay the story, it was frustratingly massacred and wrong. I felt really disappointed having my words/ideas just butchered, but I’ve been trying to get some insights from the situation.

In thesis class last week, I also feel like I fumbled the initial talk and only was able to clarify in the Q&A part. Though not as badly as the other class. There’s something about telling my idea to my peers that strikes way more fear into my heart than a simple idea sell, but that’s one of those things that get easier with practice. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not my whole idea/scope that’s really jumbled.

Since then, I’ve been thinking of some of the feedback/related work suggestions I got as well as the challenges I’m still facing concept wise. In my mind, there’s three main components: 1) the research 2) the markers 3) the site.  I think I do agree with Nancy’s suggestion that Brooklyn in itself is way too big of an undertaking, but what else from there? Before I go torturing myself doing research, I need more focus. Do I care more about people, places, or things? Is there a time period I really want to tackle? Does it make more sense to pick an area and then see what happens from there? I was intrigued when she mentioned that Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith had lived in Clinton Hill. I had planned to incorporate some birthplaces and where people grew up in my maps. A big inspiration for me is a photo installation that was in the windows of Kimmel last spring called Last Address. It was powerful to me because of the simplicity: photos of the last address of creative people who had been lost to AIDS, including Mapplethorpe. Where I grew up, crack was the great transformer of the neighborhood, but in nearby neighborhoods, the 1977 blackout was also a major event that changed how things looked and were afterwards. That could be interesting.

The markers I want to put around are another challenge. My instincts want there to be an artistic/visual bent. The problem is: I’m not especially noted for making beautiful art pieces. In my defense, I’m not a bad photographer and if there’s a historical component, there’s a large archive at the Historical Society to look through. Something I had in my mind early on was stencils. Unfortunately, I can’t test something like that until the damned snow/ice goes away though.

What I’m worried about the least is the site aspect, but it probably would be helpful for me to start thinking of the branding/visual look since I’m probably the most comfortable with that part.

Explorations #2

I’m still feeling pretty inspired by this new idea I’ve been kicking around all break. I decided this week to get all the thoughts floating around out of my head onto the page like I did with the old one. I created a new exploration map of things I’m hoping to do with this:

Coming up constantly are: history, signs, wonder, research, website/internet, and surprise. The idea right now is to research for forgotten historical sites and then mark them with stencils and signs and also keep a website enabled with a Google Map of where they all are plus info about them. A side idea that might get tacked along is the people behind the street names, i.e. who are Adelphi and Courtelyou?

I’ve been doing a lot of side research on places where I could gather some information and intern, as well as pieces that could inspire the visual aspects. I found out about some museums in Brooklyn that I didn’t know about before: The Weeksville Society, The Old Stone House, and Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn. On the last day of thesis class, I got my memory jogged about The Tree Museum which ran in 2009. Nancy’s tip about City Lore has also been a good idea generator.

I’m really excited to tackle this. I think it could be fun to do the research as well as make a fun narrative out of it all. My assignment for myself before school starts again is to actually go to the Brooklyn Historical Society and start poking around a little to get the ball rolling.

It Happened In Brooklyn

Since my last thesis related post, I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of project is actually interesting to me. The fun that I’ve had at ITP has been doing projects that are collaborative and/or ones that I could really discover something through researching and synthesizing that into an interesting read. I discovered pretty early on that I’m not especially technically proficient, but I do care about flows and how things work. I’d rather spend time writing and thinking than banging my head against the wall trying to make something function.

Last week, I had strange kernel of an idea. I had been spending time looking at the website for The Brooklyn Historical Society and was thinking it could be cool to do an internship there. One night, I ran into a city council member in really random circumstances and he told me about the museum project going on at the Navy Yard that I hadn’t heard about. As a former producer, it drives me crazy to see sites that should be good resources that are totally badly designed/outdated. I started thinking that Brooklyn history itself needed a major redesign. A phrase popped into my head: “It happened in Brooklyn.”

One of my most vivid elementary school memories was this workbook we got in the 3rd/4th grade that had all the historical landmarks and information on the people the streets were named after in my neighborhood. I remember reading it and being excited that where I lived had an important history and the most random streets were suddenly interesting. I think doing something like that on a larger scale could be really fun. I was thinking of a few different categories of info: forgotten landmarks, birth places of important/famous people, and maybe random facts about a place. All marked with a stencil “Brooklyn History Happened Here” and some sort of sign that gives a blurb and maybe a phrase/keyword to text or URL to go to for info. I think that the more obscure the information, the better and I’d rather focus on neighborhoods like East New York, Canarsie, or Bay Ridge where seeing a factoid sign could be more random/intriguing than a place like Park Slope.

Over the rest of the break, I’m focusing on feasibility and how the tech part could work. A hugely important part is the branding and design, so I’ve been kicking around some ideas on what that could be. I really wish I could find a copy of that workbook that made me so excited all those years ago, but I don’t quite know where to start. Applying for that internship is also probably a good thing to do before school starts back up.

Next?

I can’t quite believe that Thesis Prep class is over. (I really couldn’t believe on Thursday when I was early for the first time all semester and stood there for a minute before I realized that an empty room meant class was not happening. Then checked the help wiki to find out the week before was the last one. Whoops!)

It was probably one of the more useful ITP classes for me. It was nice to give the brain and imagination some breathing room and really think hard about what kind of project I could live with until May. Though granted, the idea has been floating around in my brain since the summer. And now I’ve got 6 weeks off soon to think about it some more before the final statement is due.

I’ve found my brain being shifted to other things a bit because of the papers I’ve written for Sound + Light this semester. I was an English and Sociology double major in undergrad, so it’s been a long time since I had to write long, well-researched papers (besides Video Games last year I guess, but that was way different). I love finding obscure books and articles and then bunkering down to craft a good insightful narrative. I love to write and the reading that informs that. The art idea I’m kicking around would be so much better to me (and my imagination) if I can incorporate something historical/research based into it. Over break, I guess I’ll be thinking of this is the way I really want to go or if there’s something better I could really sink my teeth into.

Art Walk Flyer

Something I’ve struggled with for most of the half-semester of Thesis Prep is dumping my idea of what I wanted to do out of my brain into some sort of concrete form. Marina challenged me to make a fantasy flyer, just for the sheer act of not being so cerebral and it was an interesting experiment. I started off by using Google Maps to take screenshot of the area and put symbols on the map as if the art walk I’m hoping to make happen was a reality. What was kinda annoying to me was I didn’t have much to say on the flyer, but it did inspire me to write first draft of my thesis statement. So that’s something at least.

New Directions and Connections

While I was presenting my mood board and drawings in class a few weeks ago, I found myself voicing the doubt that had crept into my mind about this project. I really don’t want to run a space, but I do want to facilitate something that can be community wide and interesting for everyone else without having me as the lead architect/cheerleader/figurehead/tireless worker bee — not that I don’t plan to still be that. My real concerns are financial and time-wise really. In order to build a brick and mortar location, I need to scout it, rent it, organize the decoration and prepping and probably be the one to maintain it. I’ve always been the type to get overly involved in things bigger than myself and I can definitely see myself resenting being chained to one building day in and out for 5 months or more. If I don’t burn out first, that is.

My new direction goes back to my original (summer) idea of community bridge building and site specific works. The area has a history of community murals and also The Great Wall of Brooklyn off Vanderbilt, as well as the great resource of the SONYA Collective and all the art students at Pratt. I know the hardest thing for me to remember going forward is that I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I just need a vision of what I want to implement exactly and the motivation to reach out to the right people and get it done. It’s about getting a wide swath of people who live interested in what happens around the neighborhood. Whether a sense of wonder at a statue on an unexpected corner or being intrigued by a new painting at the local coffee shop.

I’ve been searching for outside organizations that have done similar things to what I’m thinking and here’s a list I’ve been compiling:
SALT District – Syracuse
Asian Arts Initiative – Philly
Creston Murals – Grand Rapids, MI
Public Arts in Neighborhoods Program – Bellevue, WA
Penn Avenue Arts Initiative – Pittsburgh
Forecast Public Art – St. Paul, MN

A book I plan to tackle is: Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art by Grant Kester.

Museum Manifesto

Here’s the museum manifesto I wrote for Cabinets that’s going to be launch pad for my thesis project (whatever it ends up being):

The museum should be an open, informative, and welcoming space with a cohesive thematic vision and mixed media presentations. It should be connected to its surrounding community and engaged in a continuing dialogue with the outside via the exhibitions and outreach programming. The content should be thought-provoking, surprising, engaging, and fluid. The visual presentation should be modern and concise, while while grounding the artifacts in a historical and/or contemporary context. The display area should give enough room to consider and explore yet not be too overwhelming with information.

I’ve been wrestling the past couple of days with the idea of a location for my project. My original vision was to do projections and site-specific pieces, but I ended up moving more to the idea of curating a space as I visited museums this semester. With managing a space comes vast costs and I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently anxious about the idea of being tied to a location if/when I move next year.

Talking with my mother last night about the PACC sponsored bar crawl (post to come soon!), I started thinking of being a curator for a show that could be spread over many local locations. Something I liked about the event was how they used signs to link the different spaces into the evening’s plans. It could be an interesting way to have all the different community groups I’m keeping a running list of involved and save me the eternal aggravation of finding/securing/running a space. Just a thought at the moment.