From: Jeremy Beaudry <jeremy@boxwith.com>
Date: September 29, 2007 2:16:53 PM EDT
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: critical spatial practice (a view from Philadelphia)
(The following is a collaborative response by Meredith Warner and
Jeremy Beaudry. Thanks to Kevin for encouraging us to contribute
to an already astute and valuable discussion.)
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Many thanks to Markus and Teddy for their incisive posts, for
shifting this month's conversation into more solid territory. In
particular, we've found Teddy's language to be incredibly
productive in thinking about our practices as artists and
activists. We'd like to contribute some very concrete examples of
"critical spatial practice" which have everything to with
everyday, sustained practices of citizen-activists/-artists
working against violent instantiations of spatial politics on
several fronts via a broad range of tactics. And this work is
critical because 1) it is absolutely vital in how we make the
world we want to live in and 2) it questions, challenges, negates
the status quo. Also, appreciating Teddy's work (and other's on
this list, no doubt) with border politics and the tenuous status
of migratory peoples, we don't mean to privilege "citizen" here in
terms of any legal standing, but rather use it to describe
invested, engaged residents of the demos, however that body comes
together in common, structured spaces -- er, cities.
Let's get local, shall we? The complexities of Philadelphia's
dysfunction and pathology is a history too lengthy to relate here.
It is structural, cultural, institutional, and it permeates the
highest offices of civic government down to the families on our
block. This pathology is chiefly characterized by a patronage
style of governance whereby a small (like, really small) oligarchy
of elected officials, union bosses, and heads of quasi-
governmental development corporations summarily implement their
own agendas to the complete exclusion of any meaningful public
participation. (For example, witness the Penn's Landing
Corporation which owns a large chunk of Philly's central
riverfront property. It's funded by taxpayers, yet decides in its
secret board meetings how public land is to be developed.) The
polis is repeatedly divided and pitted against itself in
competition for the favors of this powerful elite. Consensus is
systematically undercut, or falsely represented. There is also a
strong sense of identification between Philadelphians as victims
with their victimizers, resulting in an unhealthy deference to
authority. Agency is an attribute unfamiliar to many of our fellow
citizens. Repeatedly we see those in the citizenry who have power
or the capacity to build power fail to use it or recognize it.
In the last few years, the problems inherent in the political
climate just described have really come to a head around issues of
large-scale urban land development, particularly along
Philadelphia's central Delaware Riverfront, which contains immense
parcels of post-industrial land that has sat vacant for the
previous 2-3 decades. It's the familiar story of the post-
industrial city re-branding itself as the new mecca of the
leisure / creative class and all the expected accoutrements: condo
towers, grand destination tourist attractions, instrumentalized
arts and culture entertaiments, quaint beautification, escalated
gentrification... it's the neoliberal city and it's magnificent!
It goes without saying that this is all to the enrichment of the
aforementioned cabal and to the exclusion of most Philadelphians.
The disenfranchisement of citizens from any legitimate process
that might ennoble self-determination has recently been
exemplified by Pennsylvania's recent foray into legalized, state-
sanctioned (and subsidized) gambling on a scale and speed that is
really unprecedented (eg. two 5,000 machine slots parlor casinos
planned for the riverfront adjacent to residential neighborhoods).
The fix has been in all along -- from the passage of the gambling
legislation in the middle of the night on July 4th weekend in 2004
to repeated state supreme court decisions that uphold gambling
interests to the cozy alliances between elected officials, casino
developers, and so-called regulators who stand to make billions.
What a gift we've been given! (And we're only being partly
facetious.) This casino clusterfuck has in fact mobilized hundreds
across the city and served as a first trial by fire for many who
had maybe not been paying attention nor ever considered themselves
as activists. What started as small clusters of neighbors self-
organizing in living rooms and barrooms in their respective
communities to oppose this unsanctioned development on the
riverfront evolved into city-wide networks of community activists
and also expanded to embrace other development-related issues like
eminent domain, gentrification and displacement, zoning code
reform, accessible public lands, environmental protections and
remediation, and open and transparent governance. The reckless
process that ushered in these planned casinos is symptomatic of
Philadelphia's (and Pennsylvania's) deep structural corruption.
And more than that: it is symptomatic of the fractures that follow
from neoliberal policies that our civic institutions have normalized.
It is this structural corruption, these egregious acts that
together we meet head-on. And there is no doubt in our mind, or in
the minds on our collaborators, that this is a battle. As Markus
describes, "In war, enemy and adversary usually hold territory,
which they can gain or lose, while each has a spokesman or
authority that can govern, submit or collapse." This is certainly
the space we find ourselves operating in. We bind ourselves to
this language of war because the acts taken by the state to
determine our future are, by their nature, violent. It is
structural violence, implemented by the state, to slowly strip the
rights of the people to participate freely in a decision-making
process about their environment and futures.
Returning to Kevin's question: "But are the military metaphors for
our response really necessary, and how do they function here?"
Yes, they are necessary -- because of the very violent nature of
conflict itself. War is conflict, and through conflict within the
context of participation, change occurs. Ultimately Markus
specifically clarifies what participation looks like by referring
to it as "conflictual participation," which is more descriptive of
the kind of participation that we have experienced as activists in
Philadelphia, and that we believe produces change. Linking these
words "conflict" and "participation" seems obvious to us because
without conflict, particiaption is rendered impotent. To quote
Markus again, "When humans assemble, spatial conflicts arise." In
our experience, the absence of conflict within the forum of
participation is a warning that participation is not actually
occurring at all. Red flags go up!
When we insert ourselves into a space of conflict, we often think
about thick and thin experiences of participation, or even the
very notion of participatory democracy (thinking here of how that
is defined in the Port Huron Statement). In our experience, thick
participation occurs within smaller, more organically formed
settings that have yet to coalesce into institutions. In these
settings, there is usually no funding, no major backer, no
particular political support -- not to mention, these
organizations are usually run by an all volunteer force that is
very localized. Any romantic notion of cooperation (collaboration
that happens with ease) is quickly dispelled by the level of
conflict within the group. Thick participation is much like
"conflictual participation": it is mired in conflict; it is a
slow, dirty trek through a thick slough with boots on that keep
getting stuck. Although compromises and resolutions are part of
the process, we have yet to see thick participation within a
particular conflict come to a definitive end; it is either just
that slow, or we have not been around long enough to experience
it. What we are more inclined to believe is, rather, that thick
participation does not end. It is a continual process that may
require considerable entrenchment and longevity.
Conversely, settings for thin participation are organized by
large, powerful institutions like cities, universities, large non-
profits, and mainstream media outlets. These forums are generally
marked by narrowly framed problems, convoluted processes for
citizen involvement, pre-established controls which to limit the
outcome of the participation, and the careful crafting of outcomes
that ultimately benefits the institutions. Conveniently for you,
busy Citizen, you need only show up on the appointed time, where
we will feed you pizza and let you pick between choice A and
choice B. Neither will you really find acceptable, but that is the
price you pay for convenience! Thin participation is fast; your
involvement in it is scant and has a defined end after which the
institution "takes the reigns" so you can get back to your busy
life. Thin participation is simply the veil of participatory
democracy, a way for institutions to create forums for public
input that ultimately legitimize projects whose outcomes have
already been determined. In our experience in Philadelphia with
organizing and advocating for citizen input and control in the
development of the riverfront and in our neighborhoods, those in
power that would do as they please rely in large part on tacit
consent of citizens. (Well, to over simplify, democratic
governments in general rely on tacit consent.) That is why thin
participation is so insidious: via sham processes of
participation, tacit consent is codified and reinscribed as
explicit consent, the collective will of the people.
Our concern here is to develop some workable understanding of
"critical spatial practice" from a purposefully contextualized
perspective. Significantly, as we engaged in activist work, our
work as artists changed too. The walls we had maintained around
the citadel of Art were useless, even harmful, certainly false,
and only enabling a scenario that Christiane accurately bemoans:
"One could easily consider that the role of the artist has now
melded with that of the court jester in our privatized
realms." (Stallabrass' "Art Incorporated" has been helpful to us
in this regard as well.) So a handful of us who are artists and
had cut our teeth together "in the trenches" of this activist work
in Philly formed a collaborative group called the Think Tank that
has yet to be named (http://thinktank.boxwith.com/) because we
understand firsthand the experience of "conflictual participation"
that is essential to participatory democracy and working for
change. But we also believe (selfishly?) that the language(s) of
art has the power to open up spaces for meaningful discourse,
critical consciousness, (dare I say it?) redemption, and perhaps
even Kevin's "ethics of plenitude."
The Think Tank formed around the recognition of a single
phenomenon that we see present in each of the organizations or
institutions we work in as activists: the presence of the
"neutral" voice. The neutral voice is the voice of one who assumes
some position of power in a group (usually the "benign" mediator/
facilitator), but refuses to lead, or acknowledge his power. The
neutral voice plays both sides of the field as it suits his own
purpose, which is to remain a central figure in the process. The
neutral voice often impedes upon any progress that might be made
because the neutral voice avoids conflict. But the neutral voice
is never neutral; he promotes his agenda through a series of
indiscernible nudges rather than through outright leadership. In
the participatory processes we are involved with this neutral
voice is omnipresent.
This epidemic of neutrality informed the way in which the Think
Tank organized itself. Each member (a word we use cautiously,
though have no replacement for) self-appoints his own distinct
Directorship. A Director's title exposes biases, revealing the
Director's position in the context of an investigation. So we
immediately declared our own respective agendas and made it a
prerequisite of participation that any other self-appointed
Directors do so as well.
One of the forms we created was the Publicly Held Private Meeting
(PHPM). These are performative and collaborative site-specific
interventions, and a format that we have used frequently in our
investigations of contemporary urban issues in Philadelphia.
Living, working, and organizing in Philadelphia, we rely on an
intimate knowledge of the city in order to initiate and faciliate
these dialogical projects. This knowledge is often gained over
time through research, observation, and by virtue of simply
sharing and negotiating space with others.
In these investigations we are also careful to implicate ourselves
as artists, if necessary. For example: the current Directors all
live in or around a gentrifying neighborhood in Philadelphia
called Fishtown. In addition to the claimed "organic" process
whereby artists are "pioneers" in the process of gentrification,
there is also a formal mandate by the City of Philadelphia to
transform the neighborhood of Fishtown into an "arts corridor." So
whether we came here because it was affordable, or because there
were other artists we knew here, does not matter. We are
implicated in the process, and it is certain that our presence
will be used by the city to further its project (here we are back
at the neoliberal city). So the investigation that occurs during a
PHPM is understood through the exposure of each Director's agenda
via their title, but also through the implication of our presence
in this neighborhood as both newcomers and artists. Teddy writes,
"Since when are we all not implicated in the power structure?" The
Directors understand this question and use self-exposure as an
attempt not to diffuse power but to acknowledge and make visible
the power and privilege we each wield and benefit from.
As activists, Teddy's conception of "critical proximity" describes
our point of entry into situations and institutions where we
engage directly with "conflictual participation," where we
challenge power head on, where we expose the "power inscribed on
the territory." But this notion of "critical proximity" is also
employed in our art practice, via our Directorships, to dissect
the structure of power and the ways in which institutions manage
space and populations. By examining spatial issues in a PHPM, at
the site of contention, via a model of self-exposure, we hope to
generate constructive dialogue that might bring to light new forms
of action. But we also hope that our physical occupation of a
site, and our engagements with those on or near the site, might
create a spatial and psychic tear that exposes the very structures
that orchestrate spatial injustice. Occupying the space in between
our art and activist practices, we have found these onsite
conversations, the PHPM, instrumental in reciprocally illuminating
the strengths and weaknesses of each practice taken on its own.
Perhaps, ultimately, art and activist practices need not be fully
integrated, but exist, too, in "critical proximity" to one another
so that we might create "counter procedures that can generate new
models of possibility."
Best.
Meredith Warner, Director of the Dept. for the Investigation of
Failure (DIF)
Jeremy Beaudry, Director of the Dept. for the Investigation of
Meaning (DIM)
We are founding members of a grass-roots community planning
organization called NABR (http://nabrhood.org) and Directors of
the Think Tank that has yet to be named (http://
thinktank.boxwith.com/).