So the point of the project was to find a handful of people who were interested in installing small green roof modules (little trays of green roof that were less than 2′x4′). These people were then to reach out to their friends/neighbors to interest them in putting modules on their roofs too. The goals were to create a network of people in a region who were all interested in urban environmental issues and spark a wave of green roof building – more on all that here.

So it started slowly with a few people interested – I kind of thought there would be loads of people who wanted a free green roof! Then I started to get interest from institutions, and although this wasn’t the intended audience, it seemed like a good idea anyway. So when we went to install the first modules the comments were along the lines of “that’s it?” “that’s so easy!” — and I realized (after my great experience with the planting program with Covenant House) that there was some other potential here. So I brought up the idea of doing a planting program with the residents of this particular institution. If they cover the costs (at just over $1,000) we could do run a half day workshop and by the end of that they would have a larger green roof – about 2,000 square feet worth!

I have since planted at a pre-school, an environmental organization and another school, all of whom are interested in doing planting workshops in the spring! So that is 4 more green roofs than NYC had before I started the project.

So, while I may not (yet) be getting the broad reach that I had hoped for, I am getting to install some larger scale green roofs with some great people. And the green roof education reaches a broad base of people who will one day build their own networks…

The project idea that I came up with was based on the experience of past projects and some upcoming projects. In order to create a closer connection or deeper understanding of their landscape, I asked the students to come up with a data set that could be mapped, but that was unseen. (Much like the 10′ above sea level line or historical topographies).

Historical Topography for Paths of Desire

The students presented their projects: mapping the paths of campus cats, overlaying a star chart on a nearby park & mapping the constellations, the path of a sail boat from point A to point B and how it is altered by the weather, mapping access points to graffiti a spot, documenting ritualistic paths (daily chores, special trips), mapping crime sites and documenting those, using the body as landscape/map, using historic/personal maps/events to explore, paths implied by remnants, spaces with arbitrarily assigned meaning.

All these projects enabled us to discuss a great range of experiences and issues:
-the concept of boundaries, how are real and perceived boundaries manifest, and how does that affect one’s experience or interpretation.
-emotional attachment/detachment to place
-relationship of the body to experiences
-changing landscapes (in weather, time, seasons)
-communities that one discovers through a deeper inspection of place, how those communities exist & interact within the space
-the psychology of landscape: how does it alter your perception, awareness, emotions and responses
-the constantly changing landscape of an urban environment

It was great to see the projects (thank you all!) And to have the time to delve into this discussion.

It also makes me want to start a website to collect these wanderings and the experiences that people might share.

For more information on work like this, start first at the Conflux Festival – the great gathering of psychogeography, then check out these projects:

• Cherry Blossoms by Alyssa Wright
• Green Line by Francis Alys
• Kalch by Julia Mandle
• HighWaterLine
• Paths of Desire

untitled pratt cat, originally uploaded by kara canal.

Lacy’s explicit focus is on the ‘community’ aspect of public art, as well as its ability to address ‘real’ social issues. She considers public art a ‘highly competitive alternative gallery system’.¹ She also eschews artists who have successful careers in the art world who periodically make public art works, or thematise the idea of public communication in their work. For Lacy, the most successful public art projects are ones where the artist works as a kind of agent, or facilitator, and is connected to or connects themselves in a genuine way to a real constituency rather than an abstract ‘public’.

and later,

For Kwon, all of the transgressive and subversive gestures which were the domain of the avant-garde in the early part of the twentieth century have become mere glosses, patinas of radicality that cover what is essentially conservative work, fully-assimilated into political agendas but rarely truly effective as community projects or as artistic ones. For her the stakes are high; the debate on public art comes down to ‘the future of democracy’, in other words whether we live in a progressive society that both looks after its citizens properly and leaves room for protest. If art becomes a salve, it absolves those in power from making structural changes that condition social inequality.

…

In each of these, Kwon probes the idea of ‘community’ – how it’s identified by the artist, whether it exists in advance of the project or is created through it, how it’s formalised, and who ends up representing it. Her discussion raises a key question that’s shared by arts professionals and community groups but not always artists: how the quality or success of public art is evaluated.

…

Kester has no illusions about the limitations of dialogical art practices, or of activist ones for that matter. He writes, ‘Not all conflicts can be resolved by free and open exchange because not all conflicts are the result of a failure among a given set of interlocutors to fully ‘understand’ or empathize with each other’.³ He works hard not to idealise the artists he cites as doing exemplary work (WochenKlausur, Helen and Newton Harrison, Stephen Willats, Suzanne Lacy, Littoral, among the best known) and, perhaps better than Kwon does, holds a magnifying glass up to a range of their projects. Kester’s conclusion is to the point: the best activist and dialogical art has left little trace in the critical literature almost as a result of the fact that the distance between the artist and audience was negligible – this is the goal, but it also indicates how marginalised this kind of practice remains within the art world and critical discourse, not to mention bureaucracies. The best work slips under the radar.

Green’s discussion of the texts is a discourse on the value of different types of public works and how we got from there to here (how plop art and community art intersect and have transformed over time). But I am currently interested in the specific aspect “If art becomes a salve, it absolves those in power from making structural changes that condition social inequality.”

I had a long conversation with two friends of mine not long ago about the role of artists in political and social agendas (one works in this realm and the other is more traditional) and as well the impact of private funding filling the gap left by the lack of federal funding for the arts and how all of this, overall impacts the culture of our country. (I also had an interesting conversation yesterday with another friend about how a lack of government funding when there is no private funding model, can affect contemporary art).

Here’s the gist of the conversation: President Bush (the elder) in his 1998 inaugural speech called for limiting government spending and asking everyone else to take up the slack:

“I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.”

—George H. W. Bush, 1988

There’s even an organization called Points of Light.

Anyway, what became the real takeaway in the new Bush administration (is he neo-bush?) is not just limiting funding (because yeh, I do think we all should be involved in our communities – in fact I think community service should be an option for funding your college education) but completely removing the funding and leaving it to the private sector to, well, do pretty much everything. So when arts funding for individuals dried up, private foundations stepped in, when the arts funding for organizations started moving towards funding conservative and traditional groups, private foundations started funding the emerging and cutting edge groups.

And, as government support and funding for social projects is redirected elsewhere around the world – non-profits and, yes, even artists, are stepping in to fill the role of what was previously a government responsibility.

Is this right or wrong? I honestly don’t have an answer for that. They whole reason I got started down the path of creating works in public was the very frustration I felt over no one else (i.e. gov’t) taking the reins and providing information to people.

Do I think artists are potentially more effective than government or even organizations working in the sector – yes, I definitely do. Artists can think more creatively, inspire action and provide an entry into the complex issues by way of art itself. Artists can move more quickly, think more strategically and take on bigger risks.

However, there does need to be some sort of support system in place for this kind of work. Is it right for me to do the work of the OEM without their support? Is it right for Amber to green the mission in SF without the city governements support? Is it right for Andrea Polli to develop extensive plans for wind turbines on the Queensbridge w/out support from National Grid (ne ConEDd)? Sure, a lot of the agencies are happy to take advantage of the project once it has started (I hear Bloomberg is interested in Polli’s project) but where is the support for creative thinking right up front?

If there were better support for these kind of projects – would they get boring and complacent? Or would they get better? (Bigger dreams?)

I am working on a plan for “MY NYC” a plan for a utopian version of NYC (yes more trees & a park on park avenue – yes wind turbines on the bridges – yes a monorail looping the city!) do you think I could get funding from PlaNYC for developing it?

Probably not. But I think I will do it anyway.

Images from top to bottom: Queensbridge Wind Project by Andrea Polli, Mission Greenbelt by Amber Hasselbring, Urban Visions drawing by Steve Lambert, HighWaterLine by me

Last night I was trying to figure out how on earth I would store the 100+ plots for the “Seeding the City” project as they await installation. Then I realized that it would be a fabulous gallery show. I could keep all of the plots on the floor of the gallery, as they left the gallery to be planted, in their place would be inscribed the location to which they are taken (the address of the roof). Along the walls would be images of the plots in place. I can even create a little string based network of the plot spaces in the gallery. I LOVE THIS IDEA! So now I have to either find a gallery that would be up for this for the entire 3-5 month project timeline (at least it is summer!) or get a Swing Space from LMCC. If you have a gallery & are interested, be sure to contact me!

So my point is, that in the interest of building this community – tell me a little about yourself. In fact, go crazy and promote yourself all out in the comments. Include links to websites so that I can know who you are too…

The myth of scarcity in the arts is the long held belief that there’s not enough X to go around. Where X represents one patrons, audience, venues, whatever. This myth creates a sometimes vicious competitive environment.

The myth is detrimental to both individual artists and the community.

The good news is that it really is BS. But that does mean coming to terms with some understanding and reality checks. The first concept to grasp is that the current system of the arts industry is broken, the pyramid is inverted. Artists, who should be at the top of the pyramid (all other services should be in support of artist) are currently at the bottom (playing the support role to all the services). This is not a complaint, just a statement of (important word choice coming up) current fact. In order to change this, artists will need to begin with reconsidering how to succeed in the art world (more on that later).

Another reality check is that there is only a minuscule number (I’ve heard rumours that it is 1% of 1% of all artists) make a large amount of money off their artwork. And by large amount of money, I mean rockstar lifestyle. We could probably figure out who they are right now, ummm, Damien Hirst, Olafur Elliasson, maybe Jeff Koons and tangentially Christo & Jean Claude (tan. because they make money off sketches of their work). Am I missing anyone?

Here’s the secret, everyone else is making money off alternative sources of income which are funding their work (teaching, speaking, working in the arts, etc). Now, there are probably quite a lot of artists who make a reasonable amount of money off their work (as opposed to the rockstar levels of money), mostly these are artists who can create easy to market & sell work, which, often is not even the work they would consider the most important or interesting. Like the e-bay and painting-a-day people (there’s a lot of merit in these methods of funding). If you are doing large scale public projects (say a chalk line around NYC) then your funding might come in a small part from grants and individuals, but in a larger part from speaking opportunities, image rights and some amount of commodification. My painter friend is pursuing painting portraits as a means to fund his work, a couple of my other friends who create non-object based work subsist on teaching and occasional fellowships. It’s a good idea to understand that you will be the biggest funder of your own work, so you should find something you can do to make money that will make you happy.

So, about how this community concept can help. It’s quite simple actually, so simple in fact that there is a cliche already made for it: a rising tide lifts all boats.

If as a community we decide that we are going to help one another, whether that is sharing knowledge, resources, experience whatever, then we all rise up together. Don’t even think it isn’t selfish, don’t you think that if I help my friend the painter get a show in a gallery or out at Coney Island, well one day he will turn around and help me when I need it. Sharing is a way of creating greater strength in numbers. (What you give is what you get).

Yes we should all be talking about money too. It empowers us all to know what people are paying for services and products so that we can price our own products and services accordingly. (For example, in my experience speaker fees can range anywhere from $200 [for local panel] to $1000 [for individual presentation outside NYC], and stipends for showing work that is documentary in nature [documentation of a project already completed] is about $300). It also helps us all present a more united front, sure there are lots of artists doing things for free (even I admit to that for a select situation), but the more we all ask for the money we rightly deserve, the more likely people will pay for it. The power of a positive no is a great thing.

So think about it, and figure out what you have to share with your fellow artists, and go out there and give that away (while simultaneously asking to be paid for your creativity).

Photos all creative commons license, courtesy of flickr and: (top to bottom)
“Support Starving Artists” by dltq
“Inverted Pyramide” by megafon (ironic that it is at the louvre no?)
“community kitchen” by smallestbones

I’m pretty excited about the panel, since, as you may have noticed, I am really interested in talking about new funding models.
I think there are a couple of important parts of the conversation around fundraising which need to be addressed, I will look at value/integration and support of artistic communities today…

First, how we talk about value of the arts in a community. The argument on the monetary value of the arts, while valuable and of great merit is overused and doesn’t fully address all of the facets of a strong arts economy. I just read a good article in the New York Times Magazine about arts in education, it profiles a report which debunks the power of the arts in strengthening skills in the “tested” subject areas. (I’ve had a problem with this argument for a while). Instead it notes that what was witnessed was: “persistence in tackling problems, observational acuity, expressive clarity, reflective capacity to question and judge, ability to envision alternative possibilities and openness to exploration.” (Nowhere has this been made more visible to me than the week I spent at ACPA, where high school students undertook a week long art project with me where they solved problems, collaborated, focused and expressed).Similarly it is important to find ways to talk about the broader impact that the arts has on our community psyche and collective consciousness. What does it mean culturally and socially to be a creative community?

And what does all this have to do with arts funding? It’s re-framing the argument and looking deeper at the value of the arts and encouraging broader support, which gets us back to the other facets of a healthy funding environment for the arts. While city, state, and federal support of the arts combined with private support giving money or resources to both organizations and individuals provides fertile ground, an active patronage also needs to exist to help create a sustainable environment (somebody has to buy the work/tickets/etc).

The final (and possibly most complicated) pieces are both government regulation in support of arts (low rent/tax breaks for venues and orgs, housing subsidy for artists, open permitting and city agency support) and integration of arts and artists into private sector economy.
The integration could occur in a variety of ways – one idea I like is to hire artists within the corporate community to inspire creative thinking. I guarantee that if you put me on your board of directors that I would be able to see things from a different point of view and come up with creative solutions. Within the private sector artists have the ability to inspire the creativity necessary to advance companies. I would also advocate for institutions to host, essentially, artist residencies. I could provide a number of inspiring community based projects to help with any variety of Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club or NRDC initiatives.

Tomorrow I will write about creating a supportive artistic community, as an artist, and how we can help each other overcome the scarcity myth.

Images courtesy of Creative Commons on Flickr (from top to bottom):
“Fund Public Art” by bourgeoisbee
“Funds Please” by otherthings
“Creative Hands – Mindy” by Dalydose
“fuck it i’ll fund that.” by yatta

I like to approach projects from an “outside the box” (boy, thats an overused term) point of view. When I mentioned the “Seeding the City” to a friend who works with green roofs, he questioned the value of planting such a small plot of greenery – how is that going to have any real affect on the Urban Heat Island Effect?

May answer, “Each individual module may have a negligible affect, but what would hundreds of modules spread across the city do to both our environment, our awareness and our social fabric?”

When you consider the potential of the project, creating potentially enough greenery on rooftops to recreate a Central Park in the sky? Now it gets interesting.

I have also been considering how to raise money for the project outside of the “normal” channels (i.e. grants). A couple of things have come up recently which I am investigating:

• ThePoint.com is a tipping point model for fundraising and social action. Get enough people to commit to something, and then it can happen. I posted the project on there with enough funds to launch the project, its a pretty high price, so we will see how close I get, but it does allow many people to be involved at a small level – it is a further exploration of microfinancing.
• Another idea is to exchange money for experience or special commodities from the project, this is based on the model of artistshare.com. The funding is given up front and then the funders are invited to participate in interesting ways throughout the project.
• Finally, my own thought of allowing people to “sponsor” grm’s throughout the city. Pay $50 and you would sponsor a grm in your choice of one of the neighborhoods. This wouldn’t be on your own roof, but would include your sponsorship information on the signage and website.

So, does anyone have any thoughts on any of this? Are there ways you would want to participate financially? Would you give a small amount for nothing in return or prefer a larger amount and a unique experience or commodity (if so what would that experience or commodity be?) or would you prefer to know that your funds are directed at a specific piece of action?

Today it was canceled due to their very busy schedules.

I am sad about that, but it also brings into stark reality something I have talked about before (I don’t mean to disparage <>Tag at all, they were very supportive of the artists in the show – offereing airfares, stipends, etc, so please don’t think I am speaking badly of their decision), the role of the artist as the hardest working in the art world. Without me producing the materials, flying out to lead the walk, managing the upload of images, searching out designers and managing their work and reposting of all of the images, well, the work just doesn’t get done. This on top of already thinking through the idea, writing text, designing signs, creating a website, researching materials… As so often happens, the artist not only must create the work, but also do all the work to get it shown. Often without a living wage renumeration. This while all the other people who work in the gallery system are getting paid either a stable salary or an hourly wage which covers all their time.

Not to worry though, Insert ____ Here is launching next week with the help of PS58 in Brooklyn (check out the kids blog on climate change – Little Grassroots!) and will be at the Sustainable South Bronx Block Party on May 17th. If you are interested in getting a group together to do “Insert ____ Here” in your city, email me at eve at insert-here dot org!

This project hits close to home, especially given a couple of recent experiences. As I would hope, as my career grows, I have more opportunities to travel with/because of my work. On the other hand, I don’t want to create a negative environmental impact with the work. And airline flights (if you didn’t already know) have HUGE carbon emissions. So how to keep the career growing, spread the work and minimize the impact?

Recently I was invited to the Wexner Center to present my work as part of the Art & Environment program. It was a one afternoon engagement. I explained the quandary to the director, and asked if there was a way to broaden my (positive) impact while there, could she work with the school or other organizations to fill up a week? She was happy to oblige. I spent a week working with a local group of extraordinary high school students (more on that later), spent the afternoon at the Wexner, and met with local artists. Believe me the week was packed full.

(I was also reminded – again – of our desperate need for better rail. The only train was a 12 hour trip arriving at 3.30am in a city two hours away, the bus left at 4am. I was totally up for taking on the long trip and early arrival, but as anyone who has ridden any distance knows, the freight trains are given priority and passenger trains are notoriously late. If I missed the 4am bus I would have been awkwardly stranded).

So in the case of Wexner it opened up lots more opportunities for me to meet with and work with people.

The other instance was that I was invited to participate in the EcoAesthetics exhibition at < > TAG platform in The Hague. They were interested in bringing in an artists who would get out into the public space and create interventions or activate public participation. Well, thats me for sure! Unfortunately I *really* couldn’t justify a flight to The Hague for a weekend project*. So instead I suggested that I create a project that could occur in the public realm, but which they could produce, organize and promote all themselves. I would provide the creative idea, the structure and the electronic files, everything else was (mostly) up to them. From that was born the “Insert ____ Here” project which will launch in The Hague this weekend, Brooklyn next weekend and then Miami and the Bronx soon after. I would love to see it happen in neighborhoods around the world, so certainly contact me, or watch the project site (totally in progress- just a theme place holder for the moment) for more information.

In light of this, I have been talking with Michael Mandiberg and Tiffany Holmes (of ecoviz.org) about creating a group of artists who are interested in participating in and promoting an electronic panel. We could be in our homes, in front of a web cam participating in a panel anywhere in the world. If Andy Revkin can do it, so can we.

*It’s not that I don’t want to go to these places – I definitely do, I love travel and I love meeting people around the world, but I am trying to be conscientious about my travel footprint – reducing the flights and if I do fly, packing the time full of opportunities.

Images (from top to bottom): Michael Mandiberg’s Real Cost plugin for Mozilla Firefox, Eve S. Mosher’s “Insert ____ Here” project