INTERVAL:On the River
a Civic Studio presentation
5:30-7:30pm
Thursday, December 3rd and Friday, December 4th, 2009
Location: Interurban (Gillette) Bridge over the Grand River, Downtown Grand Rapids
INTERVAL is a presentation of work produced in Civic Studio’s ON THE RIVER project. This project is operating in a portable studio on the Interurban Bridge in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. The project was set up on September 1st, 2009, presented research and early findings during ArtPrize, and remained on site since then. Studio work has emerged from extended time in this place.
The bridge itself is an interval of physical space, connecting two sides of the city. The Studio time spent experiencing and researching the area resulted in work that dealt with absence and perceptions present in interval spaces. Projects in various media engage these topics as they are found in memory, music, and movement through the city.
Civic Studio is a project of the Department of Art and Design at Grand Valley State University founded in 1999. Studios have been organized 7 times in different locations within the city of Grand Rapids Michigan. As with each studio, the Interurban Bridge offers a new perspective on the relationship between art and public life.
http://civicstudio.org
The Interurban Bridge is a pedestrian Bridge north of the Pearl Street Bridge and South of the Michigan (Bridge) Street Bridge.
Yesterday during class we started out and ended discussing the usual agenda/to do lists. The lists included: -Thursday’s visit by Julie Upmeyer and figuring out food/projection ideas with that. -Our studio work and materializing our ideas… MAKE STUFF! :D! - Short ArtPrize feedback statements.
Around 2:50 we departed for our walk along the river! Our destination? “Punk Island”. “Punk Island” is located in the Grand River just north of the Wealthy Street bridge. The entire class took the walk along the Grand River bank and were instructed to keep silent until our began on our return course. We walked along the rivers sidewalks towards the Eberhard Center on the east bank. After making a mass crossing over Fulton our path became a little less direct. We had to walk through brush, parking lots, around cement dividers, over/around fences, and finally to a railroad bridge! Who knows when this bridge was built but it goes directly over part of “Punk Island”. This would clearly be the best spot to cross considering we were attempting to make our visit to “Punk Island”. Many were hesitant due to the visual and safety state the bridge was in– myself included. The railroad tresses were just far enough apart for your shoe to fit into and for you to clearly see the green Grand River below. It was not exactly a short drop nor was it the safest looking bridge. As we all crossed you could feel the hesitation along with many of my peers adrenalin being kicking in. Once making it halfway across the bridge you could see “Punk Island”. Steve found a handy ladder that led from the bridge down to the island below where foot prints from others danced in the sand. While few stopped and investigated more, I continued on the longer than expected bridge! Once we came to the end many sighs of relief were heard!
Our return route was even more difficult than the route there. This time we walked around/over fences, through what I am calling the “City Garage” and “Dump” (it was simply a city building that housed all of the city trucks, i.e. garbage, plows, etc.), under an expressway with large boulders on the Grand River bank, through parking lots, and back to sidewalks again. Along this path Meghan found a pretty nice jacket balled up in a corner and thought someone could use it, with winter weather approaching us, and left it on top of a fence. Mary and Megan’s creative juices were flowing. When walking under the bridge we came across many clothes, shoes, blankets, and cushions the homeless could not take with them. They spoke of transforming the large boulders into flat areas easier resting spots. This area would also include some trash cans. Our walk ended around 4:00 and by the time we returned to the PODS.
Upon returning to the PODS we began discussing a reading from “The Interventionists”. The excerpt was written by Nato Thompson. The discussion did not get very far today. Who knows if it was because we were someplace else after our journey or if we simply could not grasp the reading fully! Nevertheless, a response assignment was assigned and we will be returning to this article on Thursday, hopefully!
We were told that blog entries are not only to be based on the topics of exciting events and activities we’ve enjoyed within the studio, but also to document our ‘mundane experiences’. We (Jackie and Christie) are currently huddled in the far end of a civic pod on a rainy and dreary Friday evening. The space heater is on, tea/hot chocolate made, we’re listening to The Mountain Goats, working on assignments and watching the occasional pedestrian scurry by with umbrella in hand. And that’s about it, the definition of a mundane studio night if there ever was one. Jackie stirred her hot chocolate with a sharpie, much worth documenting.
It should be noted that there is still excitement from the occasional (quite occasional indeed) pedestrian though. For example, 64 seconds prior to now, one man (who we admittedly did not see but could clearly hear) exclaimed, “I like that CHICK ON THE SIDEWALK” in reference to our body and space documentation. Thanks—we like it too.
I just wanted to give a quick update of what has been happening during our studio times.
Last Thursday (October 1st) we began to discuss a reading, “Dialogues in Public Art”, by Tom Finkelpearl. The reading is quite interesting but our discussion and summaries did not get us far that day. We will be continuing to discuss the article in our next studio at the PODS I believe.
This past Tuesday (October 6th) the weather was a bit on the cold, windy, and rainy side. Our class met at the Grand Rapids Public library instead of at the bridge. We met upstairs on the fourth floor in a “conference room” that had some really great wallpaper! The room had long tables set up in a square and many maps, articles, books, and other reference materials about Grand Rapids. We met with two librarians (their names escape my mind at this moment– my apologies) who were very knowledgeable and helpful to us! It was a spur of the moment decision and they were able to pull so much information together for us. Some focused on different topics of Grand Rapids such as Transportation, house boats, a scrapbook from the River Raft Races. Some others found the home they grew up in within Sanborn maps and found people who use to live in their homes. Large maps showed us the grand land scape and some without bridges even built! After talking with many classmates we have decided we would love to return back to research and explore even more about the area that we have suddenly inhabited with PODS, wireless internet, and electricity as if we were always there.
Tuesday, September 29th, during our open studio time, Kelly, Amber and I took a trip to the Grand Rapids fish ladder to see the salmon swim upstream. The fish ladder is located on Sixth Street on the west side of the Grand River. Fisherman can be seen along the river and wading into it trying their luck at this year’s salmon run.
The salmon have begun their journey upstream to lay their eggs. The dam near Sixth Street prevents the fish from swimming upstream and the fish ladder was constructed to rectify this mistake. It allows for visitors to be able to see the fish making their way upstream.
Giles Hefferen Projection
Last Saturday evening, Civic Studio presented a video by a past studio member, Giles Hefferen, as an attempt to connect with the public through river-based art. The video was projected onto a large screen stretched between the two Civic Studio PODS, and successfully engaged the public.
This video was created in 2006 while the studio was exploring various means of alternative transportation. The artist, Giles Hefferen, climbed into a gas-powered canoe and set off down the Grand River on a solo tour. He began his journey in the city of Grand Rapids and traveled all the way to Allendale, demonstrating that a river-based commute between the two cities was possible.
The moving images caught the attention of many people passing by. Perhaps most interesting were the various responses from the crowd; kids played with shadows on the image, some people thought they shouldn’t “break the beam” of the projector and looked about, slightly confused, while others merely stopped to watch for a few minutes, then moved on.
We had some good conversations with people about the possibilities of river travel.
I’ve been thinking how thick our experience is at the river so far. With ArtPrize activity and all of our preps we have had to work very hard and very quickly. So far we’ve learned and engaged many things on many levels. It seems we’ve been here a while. That is what I mean by it being “thick”. So it’s a good time to refocus and report on all that we’ve absorbed about our context so far. What are the conditions that define this site? What stands out as curious and significant or even mundane about the place? What do we know about it as a historical, recreational, natural, industrial, social, cultural, psychological space? Give this some focus and reflect back on your observations and thoughts. Post your thoughts as a comment on this blog post. Try to get something up by Studio on Tuesday.
-Paul
http://www.vimeo.com/6883612
Our water projections over the bridge at night have been great for interactivity with the public. It doesn’t matter how old– we had folks swimming, jumping, and shadow-puppeting in front of our make-shift screen all night. It was also particularly nice when people who had stopped to talk felt comfortable swirling their hands (or my pen) around in the water themselves.
It’s crazy how something as simple as a small tub of water on a projector screen can intrigue people from half a mile away. On several occasions, pedestrians who had stopped to chat mentioned that they had seen the curious light and forms from an opposite bridge and had walked specifically to find out what they were seeing. That set us up for some immediate conversations.
Thus far, the water projections have been both simple and effective (perhaps effective because they are simple).
The Interurban Bridge made a nice conceptual space for the footage. Not only do we frequently see people fishing in the river as well as off the sides of the bridges, but it is also a hot time for fishing in the area (due to the salmon run.) Also during the clip where the viewer watches the large overbearing mouth of the fisherman eating, it feels as though it could be an animal eating (due to the fact only the mouth and mustache are primarily visible). This made people uncomfortable when they realized it was a man, particularly because we do not watch each other eat. The bridge is near quite a few prestigious buildings. It occurred to us that the video was visible to people involved in a range of activities including looking down from their expensive dinners only to see a fish being caught, gutted, and eaten.
http://www.vimeo.com/6857346
For the viewers on the bridge, the footage came off in a few different ways. Some viewers were overjoyed at the process of fishing, either telling me of their own fishing stories, or simply shouting out exclamations about the fish on the screen. Another portion of the viewers were a bit startled and repulsed by the images of these fish being gutted and then eaten. I found this response interesting, because many of those people probably ate fish and meat, and didn’t typically connect the gutting and butchering of the animal with the food that they consume. We discussed how the expectation is strong in public space for large images to be positive and celebratory. The question that arose was how these images worked in that context. Images of fish being gutted at this scale was violent in some strange ways. I am not quite sure the answer for this, but I feel that it did make quite an impression!
The opening reception for ArtPrize this past Friday was awfully exciting. Not only did we have numerous onlookers meandering across the Interurban Bridge; it was the first time my footage of fishing was shown publicly. The context of the bridge was exciting and worked well with the footage. The fish were projected on the screen, and were much larger than life. The footage showed the various aspects of fishing. These aspects included waves on the water, the fish swimming, and jumping out of the water, the fish’s gills rhythmically moving when captured, and then the fish being gutted and devoured by the fisherman. This collection of clips was looped and played repeatedly over the course of the night.
I had originally decided to study fishing for a number of reasons, the main one pertaining to my relationship with my father. My father and I have had a good amount of tension between us throughout the years pertaining to meat. I am a strong believer in animal rights as well as a vegetarian, whereas my father is an avid hunter and fisherman, believing that animals were put here for human consumption. This project was not only to be seen as a criticism of fishing, but to also be seen as a way for my father and I to meet on level ground, and agree to disagree. This collection of footage is helping my father and I deal with our differences, and in that way it is important.
-Jessica
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