MixedMedia

As a mixed media artist, I’m always on the lookout for intriguing, clever, playful, whimsical ways of using ordinary materials to bring delight to the urban experience. A few recollections came to mind recently – principally as a result of a cool project I learned about during the annual MIT IDEAS Competition retreat I attended this week.

The project that got me thinking back to my days of RAOC (random acts of collage) is a “kite mapping” project that will engage youth in Brazil’s slums in surfacing the narratives of place where they live. The idea is one part arts engagement (cultivate narratives of place), a second part technical (use sophisticated technology to document narrative), another part advocacy (application of evidence to legitimize place). Of course, I’m crazy about using collage as a means for story-telling. Like Rauschenberg, I believe collage best replicates visually how we perceive the city.

I won’t go into more detail; you can learn more about “My City, My Future” (aka ArteRio) here. But here’s my point: an “owned” city space is a healthy city space.

We as the ambulatory denizens of urban settlements claim public space each time we move through it, yet we rarely leave evidence of that claim. When we do, its either harmful (waste) or viewed askance (graffitti). One generally must be a “professional” – sign-maker, architect, landscape designer – to have the privilege of shaping urban space.

And yet the delight and surprise we encounter when we come across the legacy of a Nina, Keith Harring, a Bansky, or a Shepard Fairey is part of what makes cities great – and ultimately a safe, welcoming, familiar, vibrant, exciting place to call home. Public art has never been, and should never become, the playspace of technocrats and establishment programs. And there may even be a bit of a renaissance in this “claiming” of public space by young artists working in a startling range of exciting media, which I wanted to catalogue briefly with three examples:

• Dispatch Work uses, inspires others to use, and documents in-fill of cracks and fractures, opened recesses and crumbled away facades with delightful lego work. Recent work includes Improvisal Design in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
• Tape Art is a public art and education collective that uses the line, as it can be drawn with tape of any color, to bring rigorous visual work into public and private spaces. Check out their river of art.
• Blu! has created stunning large-scale animations in the UK and Brazil using the cityscape as canvass. MUTO is their piece de resistance (I think).
• And who doesn’t love the work of the little people in London, left to (of)fend for themselves amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life. The micro-macro relationships are jaw dropping.

Its an exciting time for the urban artist and a great time for us to think and push the boundaries around art, participation, and community development.

This summer the Africa-India Technology Institute (AITI) in Accra, Ghana will host Maker Faire Africa, a two-day showcase of African ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Modeled on the popular Maker Faire format developed in the U.S. by Make Magazine and O’Reilly media, the festival will include exhibitions of functional devices invented locally, artwork derived from found objects and materials, workshops and demonstrations such as cellphone hacking, and panel discussions across a range of topics, including financing invention and the challenges of moving from invention to production.More information and a program available at http://www.makerfaireafrica.com 

Two founder-centered arts organizations, which each address the impact of violence on youth in different ways, are profiled in this month’s issue of ODE Magazine. One, founded in Los Angeles on principles of forgiveness and victim reconciliation, works with youth already deeply involved in the cycle of gang violence. The other, founded and operating in Cape Town, centering its activities on the needs of women and children who are victims of  abuse, violence and exploitation. The Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF), born out of the grief and generosity of a father who lost a son to a senseless act of violence. That was 12 years ago. Today, the foundation reaches millions of students in California with a message of hope, forgiveness and personal responsibility through programs that teach peace. Through community service projects, the TKF Foundation encourages children and youth to strengthen their ties to community.In South Africa, Angela Rackstraw founded Community Art Therapy after seeing children directly affected by gun violence playing among the dead victims. Her work, carried out in a shipping container structure at St Mary’s Catholic Church in Nyanga, a township skirting Cape Town, aims to bring healing to as many women as she can on the monthly income she scrapes together from individuals and foundations.I can imagine Peace Tiles being a resource for groups like these, offered as a tool to reach shared awareness-raising, therapy,  self-advocacy and research goals.

For the last several years, I’ve had the privilege of writing a monthly round-up of news related to the field of ‘deliberative democracy’ – participation as conversation, you might say. All of the recent news about a “food crisis” – which smacks of disingenuousness in the face of years of trade liberalization – got me thinking how public deliberation might play a role informing the policy debates. For that, we need active citizens.

The world’s growing food crisis highlights a modern challenge to democratic governments: participation in relief and development activities. Not only do citizens in many advanced industrialized nations have low levels of knowledge about foreign affairs, the aren’t particularly interested to do something about it. And so modern “disasters” – economically engineered rather than naturally occurring threats to humankind – result in sudden and dramatic changes in the quality of life for millions, if not billions, of people around the world (see commondreams.org’s The World Food Crisis).

Some theorists have argued in the past that deliberation isn’t good for activists, because it forces compromise when what their constituents need are clear victories that deliver the goods. The other side argues that a “win” isn’t sustainable unless it has buy-in from the broader public and a larger constellation of stake-holders. The latest global food crisis – which has precipitated rioting in the streets around the world and engendered political hand-wringing in the North and outrage in the South – surfaces many cross-cutting issues that illustrate the paradoxes of our age. Here are a few worth talking about:

• Agricultural subsidies and tariffs: when we “protect” local productive capacity by stimulating local investments while raising the costs of cheap agricultural imports, are we raising a defense against the shock of spiking food costs?
• Genetically modified foods: Do GMOs offer a way out of the food crisis? Proponents are vehement about the positives while opponents argue for greater local control of crop production.
• U.S. Leadership: The U.N.’s World Food Program faces a budget shortfall of $755million, in part due to declines in U.S. funding as well as its habit of not paying up.
• “Peak oil” and biofuels: One reason for the dramatic spike in food costs has been the growing market for alternative energy sources, namely “biofuels” – is this a devil’s bargain?

These are only a smattering of the issues brought into sharp focus by the latest food “shortage” crisis – and as ever, crystalizes the role an engaged public can play in setting public policy priorities, foreign and domestic.

Summary: I am raising travel funds for Kenyan community-based arts and theater educator Dennis Kimambo to join me in Vermont, USA during October.

This Fall Peace Tiles founder Lars Hasselblad Torres and Kenyan educator Dennis Kimambo are planning a get-together in Cabot, Vermont. The purpose of this meeting is to share how each of us uses the workshop format, discuss ways the Peace Tiles process has been used at the community level to promote social inclusion and education, and awareness-raising at the global level. At the same time, we are planning to strategize ways to strengthen the growing Peace Tiles network in Kenya.

Dennis Kimambo is a truly outstanding peer educator from Kenya who, among many other exciting things, is finding ways to use the Peace Tiles process in prison settings to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS prevention. Dennis also has a long track-record of building unique partnerships with local and international organizations to realize his education programs, including MTV and Family Health International. Our meeting in Cabot represents an opportunity to strengthen our relationship and define ways to deepen our collaboration.

I would very much like Dennis to come to Vermont at this beautiful time of year. To make this happen, we need to jointly raise about $2,300 to cover visa (Update: Dennis has secured a visa, which cost $350 and has already been covered!) and airfare as well as a modest travel stipend. I hope you will join me in helping to raise the funds necessary to bring this dynamic educator to the US for ten days in October . I am convinced that Dennis’ visit will be a wonderful learning and networking opportunity, as well as help to strengthen a Peace Tiles link the to grassroots in Kenya.

To learn more about Dennis, please visit the Omidyar Network online community. To make a donation, click on the badge below

Deepest thanks,

lars