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.
Posted on November 29th, 2006 in activism, of interest, project news and
A version of this text is printed in the November 29, 2006 edition of the The Spirit community newspaper in Fishtown—hence the slightly awkward journalistic tone.
Philadelphia residents have an unprecedented opportunity to work with local civic leaders and urban planning and design professionals to envision a world-class riverfront along the central Delaware River. In mid-October when Mayor Street issued the executive order creating the Central Delaware Advisory Group, a working body of 45 representatives from various communities, non-profits and offices around the city, he challenged Philadelphians to imagine the very best for the riverfront and to think boldly about the character of the riverfront we would like to live on, work on, and enjoy for generations to come. It is with a great sense of duty and honor that I serve as the liaison between the residents of my neighborhood of Fishtown and this advisory group.
Shortly after the mayor’s executive order, the riverfront visioning process quickly began with a series of 3 walks along the Delaware River from South Philly through Penn’s Landing and north beyond Penn Treaty Park into Port Richmond. These well-attended walks and talks were instrumental in reminding us of the rich history of the riverfront as well as revealing the current condition of the land along the river.
The first meeting of the Central Delaware Advisory Group was held in early November in a packed conference room at the offices of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. With introductions by Janice Woodcock, executive director of the planning commission, and Harris Steinberg and Harris Sokolof of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Praxis, the year-long visioning and planning process officially began. We talked with each other about the concerns and hopes our neighborhoods have for the riverfront. We recounted memorable experiences from other waterfronts that we have had in Philadelphia and in other cities around the world. We generated an informal list of uses and features we think it will be important to consider in any riverfront plan: things like a vibrant port industry, open spaces, housing, local businesses, and so on.
We learned that the next year would see numerous civic engagement forums and meetings across the city to gather input from Philadelphians on what they desire for the riverfront. Early next year a team of design professionals will be commissioned to work with the public and advisory group to interpret that vision and mold it into a workable plan. Finally, the entire process as well as the design work will be presented to the city in a prominent, public exhibition in September 2007.
Last week, members of the advisory group embarked on a field trip to New York to view firsthand a few of its recent waterfront development projects and to meet with key leaders who have helped guide it. Our task was not to copy New York’s development model or to find specific, pre-packaged solutions, but rather to learn about the many challenges New York has faced, the kinds of questions New Yorkers have asked and the steps they have taken in their planning processes. I believe that we gained significant insight into our own condition in Philadelphia. We have much to learn from New York’s (and other cities’) successes and failures when it comes to waterfront planning and development.
Our tour of New York began on the west side of Manhattan along a narrow strip next to the Hudson River. A generous bike path connecting a series of small-scale public spaces travels the length of the river and is punctuated by several multi-functional parks that have been created on the existing piers. At least 20 years in the making, this stretch of New York’s waterfront demonstrated the intensity and difficulty of any comprehensive planning process but also the potential rewards of fighting for a collective planning vision.
After a look at the high-end development of Battery Park City with its massive residential and commercial buildings, its focus on green building, and integrated public spaces and public art, we ended the day at the City of New York Planning Commission for presentations by 2 lead planners and remarks by Amanda Burden, executive director. We learned about plans currently underway for the East River waterfront and for a major redevelopment scheme on the waterfront in the Greenpoint-Williamsburg sections of Brooklyn. Certain parallels with Philadelphia can be seen in these projects: the largely post-industrial land in Brooklyn adjacent to thriving residential neighborhoods, and the East River waterfront’s struggle with the FDR elevated highway (like our own I-95).
I came away from the New York trip with two pressing concerns:
1) How do we guarantee access to affordable, humane housing when planning for residential development on the riverfront? We saw two different approaches to this question in New York: in Battery Park City no consideration was giving to affordable housing ($6500/month rents for a one bedroom!)—market forces are left unchecked, pushing the cost of housing to levels unmanageable by all but the very wealthy; in Greenpoint-Williamsburg we saw that the city has rezoned the waterfront area and created an incentive program which uses private development capital to fund a percentage of affordable housing. The former is untenable, the latter a first step but not without problems. My neighbors in Fishtown and Port Richmond—most of whom have lived there for generations—are in danger of being displaced by the wave of gentrification that is creeping north of center city in the form of rising housing costs and property taxes.
2) How do we create truly public, democratic space on the riverfront, knowing that we will need to most likely partner with private developers? Quasi-public spaces like shopping malls present the illusion of a public commons but our rights as citizens are incredibly limited in such spaces. If the city enters into development cooperations with the private sector, we must be careful to ensure that our open spaces on the riverfront are truly public, truly accessible to all citizens, and afford our guaranteed rights as citizens.
Moving forward, it is incredibly important that we participate as fully as we can in crafting and expressing our vision for the riverfront. We will need to consider difficult problems and respond with meaningful, complex solutions. How do we guarantee access to affordable, humane housing when planning for residential development on the riverfront? How do we create truly public, democratic space on the riverfront, knowing that we will most likely need to with private developers? How do we plan for a variety of uses on the riverfront which allow for green space and economic growth, new jobs and new recreational uses, new construction and historic preservation?
For too long the voices of everyday Philadelphians have been ignored while a few have made decisions about our city that do not serve the public good. Here is our chance, by order of Mayor Street, to declare what we desire for our city and to hold those who represent us accountable for realizing our vision. In the coming weeks there will be several public meetings around the city where we can express this vision and work with each other to develop a collective plan for the riverfront. Also, all meetings of the Central Delaware Advisory Group are open to the public. For more information about these events and all other news of the process, visit www.planphilly.com.
Update 12/1/06: Also see The People’s Waterfront at Green City Journal.
Posted on September 17th, 2006 in musings, project news and
I’ve written previously here and there (and somewhat circuitously) about the post-industrial sites along the Delaware River in the northeast section Philadelphia. The sites now serve as an index to understanding (or at least observing) the decline of American cities like Philadelphia that relied heavily on industry and manufacturing as its source of employment and economic stability. For centuries, Philadelphia’s greatest resource has been the Delaware River and its suitability as a port for the transport and exchange of large volumes of manufactured goods, foodstuffs, and natural resources to and from the world over. One such exchange network was the distribution of coal, specifically the anthracite variety mined in the northeastern Pennsylvania coal region. Coal was transported by rail into Philadelphia and then transferred to coastal colliers and ocean-going ships at piers on the Delaware River.
What remains of this network is the monumental ruined infrastructure which once supported it: the railroad track, the bridges, the iron and steel, the reinforced concrete, the ships rigging, the piers: the ruins of industry. Despite the lands toxicity, vegetation seems to thrive, reclaiming the river’s edge amid the ever-widening gaps and cracks in the built environment. And the originally programmed uses for this industrial infrastructure have been replaced by those never intended for it: a place to fish for chad, or concrete canvasses for graffiti artists, or a shelter for a midnight bonfire, or a remote refuge for any number of nefarious acts. (We thought it would never end, the prosperity, the growth, the domination, the economic might!) Now, as peripheral and forgotten spaces in the urban environment, what remains is the evidence of old orders ending and new ones beginning. Things fall apart, and there is meaning in that falling apart. These ruins are different from, say, those celebrated ruins of the Roman forum: the decay of place as romanticized destination. In Philadelphia, our industrial ruins are largely unacknowledged and certainly not framed as official “heritage.” For the small group of people who trespass these ruins and eke out a place for themselves there, the site retains an ulterior, unsanctioned usefulness that still holds relevance in the life of the city.
Posted on September 3rd, 2006 in of interest, peripherals, project news and
Nat King Tron (aka the band) has just self-released our second record entitled “In the Presence of Peasants,” an off-the-cuff document of two days of improvised musical experimentation. The tracks were culled from about 10 hours of material, all recorded, engineered, and mastered by our friend Peter Richan at his Buckeye Recording Studio in South Philly. Many thanks also are due to Kara Schlindwein for creating the packaging design with absolutely no direction from us (talk about your difficult client).
The other players in the trio are John Schlicter (aka Sarge), long-time collaborator, Six Acre Lake co-founder, guitar and effects maestro; and Matt Lee (like the General) who wails on alto saxophone, effects, and the bleeps and blips. “In the Presence of Peasants” explores a pretty diverse range of territory, shifting genres and dynamics: indie/math rock, electronic, experimental, metal, jazz. At moment we’re developing our live set to encompass equal parts composed and improvised material.
Easter Bunny is available for download, or you can stream some other tracks from the new release at our page on Mr. Murdoch’s MySpace. Up to date info on our movements can also be found at www.natkingtron.com.
Posted on May 30th, 2006 in activism, project news and
I’m working (slowly) with several collaborators (artists and non-artists) to develop the Open Fields Project, which is an interpretive investigation and documentation of urban ecologies in Philadelphia. These urban ecologies exist in countless diverse sites and scales across the city: in sidewalk cracks, decayed brick walls, backyards, vacant lots, long-forgotten junk heaps, expressway shoulders, railroad tracks, and post-industrial brownfields. Some of these sites are interstitial spaces, insinuating themselves in between the hardness of the city; others are much larger and constitute cohesive places with distinct identities that approximate rogue parks.
One thing many us working on the project have come to understand is that the more one observes and photographs these leftover spaces and their varied vegetation, the more one sees the quiet complexity of natural ecologies which happen to thrive in seemingly hostile urban environments. The process of close study allows one to pass through layers of perception and understanding: first scan reveals little more than the distinction between man-made and invasive weeds; second scan perhaps leads one to distinguish a prickly weed from a leafy weed; the third scan provides more detail and understanding of the subtleties nature achieves even in “limited” environments; and so on.
I believe we all also agree that it’s very important to this project that we are non-specialists embarking on a rather “scientific” course of botanical or ecological “study.” We hope to arrive at unconventional methods and systems of classification that maybe begin to challenge received notions of science and the scientific method. Specifically, I think of Thomas Kuhn’s work regarding paradigm shifts in discussing scientific revolutions: the idea that science becomes ensconced in normalized methods and worldviews of which anyone working within a specific paradigm is unaware and therefore unable to see beyond. I don’t mean to claim that our project is pushing us into a new paradigm! But the implications of engaging in a pseudo-scientific investigation, being non-scientists, are that we may work to expand a given paradigm and (who knows) find ourselves in uncharted territory.
What particularly interests me about these thriving urban ecologies we are discovering is how they relate inversely to the entropy of man-made urban environments. Walls crumble, sidewalks crack, buildings fall down–and in this loss, this slowing down of man’s progress, nature asserts itself with much resilience and vigilance. Mankind must work so hard to stay the onslaught of nature! Ours is a technological history; that is, a history of subjugating nature to our needs and desires. And I think for anyone who takes the millennial view, this is a reassuring comfort: that nature, in whatever unfathomable and infinite cycles, will always prevail, will always creep up through the cracks and gaps no matter how we trivial humans attempt to control it and ultimately destroy it. Nature is dead! Long live nature!
View some preliminary work on the Open Fields Project here.
