the Think Tank that has yet to be named
Posted on January 15th, 2007 in activism, collaboration, project news and
Over the past 6 months, a significant portion of my art practice has been concerned with the Think Tank that has yet to be named, which is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project based here in Philadelphia. As a critical praxis, the Think Tank was formed by a small group of us who saw ourselves and our creative practices being implicated in the dilemma of contemporary urban (re)development strategies—that is, gentrification. With the realization that the so-called “artist” is often a hapless, or even willing, tool of the hipster-fication, sanitization, and homogenization of urban space, we had no choice but to critically acknowledge our roles as gentrifiers and subsequently interrogate and challenge this condition.
The Think Tank is comprised of several Departments, each led by a single Director. (I currently serve as the Director of the Dept. for the Investigation of Meaning (DIM) and the Director of the Dept. for the Investigation of Documentary Subjectivity (DIDS).) There can be no Department without a Director, and there can be no Director without a Department. Directors are both autonomous agents and cooperative collaborators. In this respect, the Think Tank has no members, only directors. The declaration of a directorship in a Department amounts to a statement of that individual’s bias and agenda. Nothing is more offensive to the Think Tank than the pretense of neutrality!
To date, the Think Tank’s Publicly Held Private Meetings (PHPM) have made up the bulk of the work the group has done. As the the named suggests, these meetings are held in public places—a street corner, a subway car, etc—and they are private inasmuch as their locations and times are publicized only after the fact. Anyone who happens by a PHPM is welcome to join the conversation. The only prerequisite is that the newcomer assume a directorship of the department of their choice.
For more about the Think Tank’s work, visit thinktank.boxwith.com.
