Pub­lic Do­main

In the pre­vious post, I took a quick look at Cass Sun­stein's #re­public— par­tic­u­larly, at the mech­a­nisms of on­line po­lar­iza­tion. I'm also em­pa­thetic to Sun­stein's hopes for a ded­i­cated on­line Com­mons. Here, I wanted to write some ob­ser­va­tions on the quality of de­signed spaces for shared ex­pe­ri­ence— looking es­pe­cially at the ap­pli­ca­tion of public art.

Sun­stein calls for a public do­main, des­ig­nated as a place for pop­ular de­lib­er­a­tion— a kind of in­cu­bator of so­cial progress. I wonder how we might com­pare a side­walk and a park— or better yet, an old public house to a dig­ital forum in this ca­pacity? In what way does art func­tion in this space to pro­voke or cu­rate shared ex­pe­ri­ences? To ap­proach these ques­tions, I'd like to tell a story about an artist, David Powers.

David Powers

In 2016, I was vol­un­teering at Side Street Studio Arts — a gallery in Elgin, IL. I would drive there straight from my job at Bridge­water , a fab­ri­ca­tion shop just out­side Chicago, near McKinley Park.

A few days a week I was there, at Side Street, opening the gallery, turning on the lights, taking out the garbage, making small talk and telling vis­i­tors about events. Some­times I'd mop the floor— and once I re­placed a few wooden slats on the HVAC closet door.

When no one was in the gallery, I might log a few hours of re­mote work, doing SEO on com­mer­cial web­sites. I most en­joyed vol­un­teering on nights when they were hosting Battle of the Bands. The ma­jority of bands were punk and hard­core, and I took tips for PBRs and Millers— and might take a break to mosh for minute. Going to punk and metal shows in high school, I re­ally ap­pre­ci­ated what the owners were pro­viding for the com­mu­nity.

One day, a man walked into the gallery and in­tro­duced him­self. He was spec­ta­cled and mous­tached and wearing some hiked shorts, flip-flops and a ball cap. His t-shirt was tucked evenly over a round belly into his pants. He was looking for Tanner— who's one of the owners— but he wasn't in that day.

He asked if I might grab us a beer from the base­ment. I was much younger, and didn't want to be rude... He seemed to know Tanner well, and he knew where we kept the beer. I fig­ured that I should show some common cour­tesy and get us a couple cans.

I had never met David Powers be­fore, but im­me­di­ately he struck me a sage person— if not a mad ge­nius. He had a won­derful way of speaking— no fil­ters, usu­ally vulgar (and im­pro­vi­sa­tional), yet often po­etic. In the time David drank his two beers, we somehow man­aged to move from in­tro­duc­tions to a more philo­soph­ical dis­cus­sion sur­rounding his re­cent art­work.

Amer­ican Noc­turne

He told me about the city's plans to take down his mural, Amer­ican Noc­turne. Powers had painted the mural as a con­tri­bu­tion to an Elgin Cul­tural Arts Com­mis­sion in 2004. It had been dis­played in a plaza in the sub­urban Illi­nois town for over a decade now.

More re­cently, the source of in­spi­ra­tion was dis­cov­ered— a 1930 pho­to­graph of a lynch mob gath­ered around two bodies. In the fore­ground a man is pointing at the hanging bodies with a men­acing finger. Soon there­after, the public was de­manding that the mural, painted on a large bill­board-like struc­ture, be taken down.

Co­in­ci­dence with Char­lottesville

In­ter­est­ingly, this con­tro­versy began about a year be­fore the hideous events oc­curred in Char­lottesville, VA. The event, a neo-Nazi / alt-right rally (called "Unite the Right"), oc­curred over the city's de­ci­sion to re­move an eques­trian statue of Gen­eral Robert E. Lee.

Here, the sit­u­a­tion be­came so ex­ac­er­bated that a "state of emer­gency" was de­clared. For many of us, news of the car plowing into counter-pro­testers pro­vided the most salient im­agery of what was hap­pening there.

The Mon­u­ment

In my con­cen­tra­tion, Art, De­sign and the Public Do­main, the mon­u­ment— and its dis­tinc­tion from public art— is a hot topic. The ma­jority of mon­u­ments are sym­bols of war and trauma. The statue of Gen­eral Lee, for ex­ample, is com­mem­o­ra­tive of the Con­fed­erate leader— and, as pro­testers might argue, a cul­tural icon of the ideals of the Amer­ican South.

The statue of Robert Lee in what is now Eman­ci­pa­tion Park was cov­ered with a black tarp after the vi­o­lence, and has since sparked the re­moval of other Con­fed­erate statues in New Or­leans and else­where.

Public art, as op­posed to mon­u­ments, bears more than re­mem­brance. More than a his­toric cul­tural icon, a work of art af­fords de­lib­er­a­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Public art, as op­posed to mon­u­ments, has the ability to re­sist a sin­gular nar­ra­tive— an ap­pointed meaning.

During my con­ver­sa­tion with David, he spoke about self-med­ica­tion. I think what he was saying is that everyone has a way of de­fending their be­liefs and bi­ases. The people who com­mitted thoes hor­rible acts in Char­lottesville somehow con­vince them­selves that they are right— that their be­liefs are true.

The com­mu­ni­ty's re­ac­tion to the mural, Amer­ican Noc­turne, an­tic­i­pated an event like Char­lottesville. The mural and mon­u­ment both create tan­gible markers of a trau­matic past.

I don't be­lieve David was a racist, and he was less heart-broken to see his mural taken down than he was heart-broken to be dis­carded as a com­mu­nity artist. I think he was right that not everyone in the com­mu­nity prossessed the courage to con­front the is­sues it pro­voked.

He wanted to do a fu­ture art­work that sounded sim­ilar to some of the work of my grad­uate pro­fessor, Krzysztof Wodizcko . David wanted to have a pro­jector that would create a "lit mural" where, per­haps, anyone could up­load im­ages with a USB drive.

Ap­par­ently, the city has es­sen­tially black­listed him, and I sensed he was feeling hope­less. Not only for him­self at the theft of his cre­ative power, but I think at the dys­func­tion of public de­lib­er­a­tion.

He said he didn't own a com­puter, and didn't watch much tele­vi­sion— if I can re­call, he didn't even own a cell­phone. His mural, it seemed, was made to be taken down. He wanted people talk about what hap­pened in Elgin, what is hap­pening in America, and how we can all pre­vent it from con­tin­uing to happen.

Much of the dis­cus­sion in so­cial media and local news seemed to os­tra­cize David, and the image has been con­demned .

Public Art and a Painful Past

The pho­to­graph Powers used was from 1930 in Marion, In­diana (not es­pe­cially far from Elgin). He told me that he can re­member a time from his child­hood when the KKK had marched right down a street, there in Elgin. Powers be­lieved that without re­minders and public de­lib­er­a­tion, his­tory— and all its atroc­i­ties— is oft to re­peat it­self. I hope that he is able to follow through with his pro­jected mural.