Nadia Mohamed
May 2016
I am focusing on existing independent media production and grassroots distribution and engagement with people living in the ‘rust belt’ of the United States. Rust belt cities have borne the brunt of globalization and de-industrialization in the U.S. and are generally concentrated in the northeast and Midwest region. It’s boundaries are contested, and if anything the rust belt probably refers more to how coastal, and even potentially more ‘elite’ metro areas describe, and try to flatten or make comprehensible the cultural, economic and social climates of geographic areas that were once dominated by a handful of manufacturing industries and today, often face extreme inequality and a hollowed out economic core.
Today, the rust belt of the United States is often popularly depicted in simplistic binaries: places of deep despair: shrinking tax bases, infrastructure in disrepair, and struggling communities who have been left behind; or uplifting hope and potential, at least for the privileged: ‘blanks slates’ at the ready for pioneering newcomers to stake their claim with creativity and chutzpah. These flat representations are deeply troubling, often lacking historical narrative and the voice or agency of the communities that are depicted, or, in some cases, erased.
What is the role of media making and sharing in disrupting these narratives? Who are the media makers and media sharers who are questioning these stories, giving context to present situations that bring in historical truths and position the present in ways that can create pathways towards more just and equitable futures? Which organizations, coalitions and networks are hosting these important questions and dialogues and charting new and necessary courses?
This research focuses on initial findings for three places popularly considered part of the rust belt, Baltimore, Detroit and Buffalo. Findings are either: (1) social justice oriented community based organizations, networks, coalitions and initiatives geared towards working on issues of land/space and power and/or (2) Arts and Media Producers/Incubators/Distributors that are focused on transformative storytelling in the service of social change.
In this reflection paper, I highlight on one finding from Baltimore and Detroit. Both examples are forms working outside of traditional cinema, incorporating media and interactive elements and engagement rooted in local communities. While the Baltimore example is rooted locally, the example from Detroit positions itself as engaging communities translocally.
BALTIMORE
Depending on who is counting, Baltimore is a city with anywhere between 16,000 to upwards of 45,000 vacant or underutilized properties. Once a hub for manufacturing and steel related jobs, since the 1970s, the city has lost thousands of blue-‐collar jobs as well as hundreds of thousands of its residents. This shift in a resource base was also exacerbated by increased regional investments to surrounding suburbs.
In December 2015, United Workers, a community-‐organizing group based in Baltimore, Maryland staged an art-‐takeover of vacant buildings in a neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore to make visible the needs for community control of land and the need for more investment. Using makeshift blackboards and hand drawn signs, members and residents came together to envision the future use of buildings and tax resources. One area reads, “25 years, 381 Vacant homes and 30 million never landing in communities,” followed by another area: “What can a community do with 30 million?” Another reads, “This House Could Be…” everything from a community gathering space, to a place for music, a clinic, a barber shop, a foster home, and likely, all that’s between.
The United Workers also supports a youth-‐led human rights committee called Free Your Voice, which incorporates storytelling and the production of media into its leadership development work. One of their main areas of work is addressing the siting of the nation’s largest trash incinerator in their community, Curtis Bay, and proposing instead to have community control over land to create green energy and cooperative economic models that address energy and environmental health needs. The media production and distribution work of Free Your Voice includes a short eponymous lyrical advocacy video about the community of Curtis Bay. While less visually and narratively provocative than Furtado’s Ilha das Flores, the film highlights the ways in which the community has literally been a “dumping ground” for waste from other communities and highlights the humanity, and human rights of its residents.
Taken together, the various strands of work that United Workers and Free Your Voice does reminds me of the work we’ve reviewed in class, especially Robert Stam’s From Hybridity to the Aesthetics of Garbage. The street art takeover is what Stam calls the “jujitsu trait of turning strategic weakness into tactical strength,” and in its existence creates a “palimpsest” of “multiple temporalities.” I chose this example, in part because during my initial research, I was considering documenting/cataloguing vacant and underutilized spaces, yet had questions about the implications of doing so, especially given the way in which urban ruins have become aestheticized by fascinated outsiders. Because United Workers is doing this in a way that involves directly impacted communities, and they are funneling this creative energy into a bigger campaign for public investment in the community control of land through land trusts, this particular project is important to highlight.
DETROIT
Beware of the Dandelions is piece of experiential art that is part performance; incorporating live projections and hip hop performance, and part science fiction parable and interactive game. It is produced by the Detroit-‐based collective, Complex Movements, whose team of lead artists include Wesley Taylor, a graphic designer/fine artist, Waajeed a music produce/sound designed/filmmaker, Invincible (ill Weaver) a lyricist/organizer, and L05 (Carlos Garcia) a multimedia artist/performance systems architect. The collective draws its inspiration from the life and work of Detroit-‐based activist Grace Lee Boggs. Complex Movements’ community for Beware of the Dandelions extends pretty extensively, with an additional team of 6 collaborators, and dozens of organizational partners, as well as an advisory circle of nearly two-‐dozen individuals.
Participants experience Beware of the Dandelions by entering a mobile installation called the pod, and experience an “interactive, multi-‐player live action game.” It explores themes of militarism, survelliance and capitalism, as well as collective resistance and power. Its narrative can be loosely read as currently unfolding situations in Detroit around land, labor and other resources.
As one of the lead artists, ill describes, this project is about both “process and product” and the interactivity surfaces the audience as “agents,” participants who have a role to play in order to advance the narrative while experiencing the performance. Interestingly, the collective also builds on this, and uses the opportunity to tour with this piece as an opening for co-‐creating spaces for translocal movement building on social issues relevant to the spaces and communities they encounter.
Complex Movements’ Beware of the Dandelions is an example of collectively produced media and distribution mechanism that surface some of the primary tenets of Third Cinema, especially when thinking about the makers’ relationship to audience. I am immediately reminded of Solanas and Getino’s writing, Towards a Third Cinema, when discussing La Hora de los Hornos, and the paramount importance that the space/time of coming together to watch the film was as important if not more than the film itself—the film becomes a “pretext for dialog, for the seeking and finding of wills.”
Overall, this research process has illuminated the importance of deconstructing and reconstituting narratives of place, peoples and power and has opened up new ideas for creating interactive pieces built on the premise that participation and engagement is key for setting a sturdy foundation for more just and transformative futures.
Research Findings:
Community Based Organizations, Coalitions, Networks & Media
Making/Sharing Organizations in Baltimore, Detroit & Buffalo
- United Workers, Baltimore, Maryland based community group. Organizes workers and community members on local human rights campaigns, especially at the intersection of labor and land, “Fair Development” or “Development without Displacement.”
- Free Your Voice – Baltimore, Maryland – Curtis Bay community. Human rights committee working on fair development issues, especially related to the siting of incinerator and other environmental justice work.
- Baltimore Algebra Project, Baltimore, Maryland – is a youth run organization that works to ensure all students have access to high quality education and supports and develops young leaders.
- New Lens, Baltimore, Maryland – youth driven art and media organization geared toward producing media on underrepresented topics to facilitate dialogue, shift perspective and stimulate action.
- Complex Movements, Detroit, MI – artist collective supporting the transformation of communities through multimedia interactive performance work. “Beware of the Dandelions” is a performance and discussion based art project. (link to Beware review: http://howlround.com/complex-movements-beware-of-the-dandelions)
- Detroit People’s Platform – Detroit, MI; broad network of social justice organizations & individuals working on issues including: land, food, good jobs, governance and poverty & inequality.
- Detroit Summer– Detroit Summer is multi-racial, inter-generational collective in Detroit that has been working to transform communities through youth leadership, creativity and collective action since 1992. (uses media)
- Allied Media Projects – Detroit, MI – produces the Allied Media Conference and supports art, media and tech projects.
- Detroit Narrative Agency –Detroit, MI – group of Detroiters aiming to shift the narratives about Detroit and incubate storytellers to tell new narratives. Currently, a small funding outfit based out of the Allied Media Projects.
- PUSH Buffalo, Buffalo, New York. People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) is a community based organization that organizes community members for strong communities with quality, affordable housing and work with dignity to expand economic justice in Buffalo.
- Open Buffalo – civic initiative to make long term improvements to justice and equity in Buffalo, linking various community-based groups together. Part of Open Society’s Initiative for place-based grantmaking.
- Crossroads Collective – Buffalo, NY partnership of 8 initial partners working to “create a new economy on the frontlines of climate change.”