Participatory Art

Part 2 of Katherine Gressel writing about the FIGMENT 2010 “Pallet City” project she co-built with Jeremy Reed and a team of dedicated volunteers. See here for part 1. Please visit the Pallet City Blog for full coverage of “Pallet City.”

Planning a City: Public and participatory art involves taking risks, but it is also about careful planning and teamwork. As it turned out, a large part of the “participation” in Pallet City came from the community that grew around its complex construction.

We spent a lot of time recruiting people. The project needed team-members with varied skills to help us accomplish feats ranging from structural engineering to transporting 90+ carefully sanded and trimmed shipping pallets from the Brooklyn Navy Yard onto Governor’s Island and putting the parts together.

And it was only with the help of nearly 50 devoted volunteers, that our initial sketch of a linear urban form got built. It was installed in about 5 days as a 154 foot long structure with morphing shapes that implied and encouraged different actions that take place in an urban environment: sitting, playing, exhibiting art, performing, gardening, etc.

Pallet City Comes Alive: One of the essential components of the project was to provide ongoing ways for the public to interact –with the project and each other—over the course of the summer, even in the artists’ absence. And it did, from a “Pallet Jam” musical performance on our pallet “stage,” to rotating interactive art shows in our pallet “gallery.”

"The Brooklyn What?" at Pallet Jam, an August 2010 event where scheduled bands also invited passersby to join in

I’ve always been interested in observing how a work of collaborative public art has a lifespan beyond its initial unveiling. In the case of FIGMENT, we felt that documenting interaction with Pallet City throughout the summer was crucial.

We put up signs on the project itself inviting visitors to email us photos of themselves engaging with our project, and we continually added them to the blog. We consistently got submissions for the blog from total strangers, and it gave Pallet City a digital presence beyond the island and 2010.

Challenges of Participation: As much as we wanted Pallet City to be interactive, admittedly we weren’t prepared for quite so many people interacting quite so much with Pallet City at opening weekend.

Our participatory "gallery" at the beginning of opening weekend

Our participatory "gallery" at the end of opening weekend

One lesson: If you encourage participation, it will happen in unexpected ways: For instance, if you attach magic markers to the sculpture and designate small areas for drawing, in an event attended by tens of thousands, people will in fact graffiti all over the project. Eventually, we had to sand off some of the graffiti in our “gallery” area so we could hang more artists’ work. But we also kept a lot of it, especially the more “uplifting” messages.

"Play"

Another Lesson: Be flexible and adaptable, surrender control…but not too much control:
We wanted our project to retain aesthetic integrity all season long, and it also had to remain safe. When we found that people were climbing on unexpected parts of the structure, we allowed FIGMENT to put up signs about where not to climb. We also came back on many weekends, in order to improve the structural soundness of our project and replace broken boards or torn signs.

The aesthetics of Participation: Admittedly, we might have liked our project to be more “beautiful” overall, as if it had been put together by professional fabricators. But for that to happen, we would have had to sacrifice a lot of the sense of resourcefulness and self-sufficiency, not to mention community, that is a guiding principal of FIGMENT.

"Play"

I do believe season-long artists should know how to make their physical designs withstand both weather and repeated public use, or, like us, at least be willing to baby-sit their projects throughout the summer when things go awry. People who come to the FIGMENT sculpture garden wanting to experience strong visual art should get to experience strong visual art.

But ultimately, FIGMENT is about participation. Having a developed  artistic vision and aesthetic behind each project should simply be another element that encourages people to participate. The two go hand in hand.

Final Thoughts: The FIGMENT season-long area is a challenging setting to create art, and not just because of the hours of labor involved or the constraints of building on an island with limited electricity and water and daytime hours.

Jeremy and I both come from professions where built work is supposed to not only look polished but also “do” something tangible. In architecture, the purpose of a house, office building, or playground is clear, and in the community art/nonprofit world I inhabit, you need to demonstrate to funders that your collaborative art project has accomplished a specific outcome, such as youth empowerment or community renewal.

FIGMENT is not necessarily about polished finish, or quantifiable goals, it is about something that is in a way much bigger: inspiring countless ordinary people to tap into their own creativity, to feel as though the impossible is possible, and most of all, to have fun.

This is what experiencing FIGMENT as visitors did for me and Jeremy in 2009, and we are grateful we took the plunge and risked “bringing” something huge to it the following year.

We’re taking a break from building a major sculpture this summer, but hope to be back again in the future. And we look forward to seeing the incredible work that others are planning for FIGMENT 2011!

The artists in "Pallet City"

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*For more information on Reuse and Recycling in NYC: Official DSNY site here

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Last Week in “Lessons of a FIGMENT Sculpture Garden first-timer Part 1“:
- Intro:
- The Seed of a Project:
- The Project is Born:
- Making the Most of the Idea:
- The Project Evolves:

About the Author & Artist:  Katherine Gressel is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator. She has shown her paintings and interactive public art installations at the Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Artists Gym, and City Without Walls in Newark. She is a recipient of the 2008 Abbey Mural Fellowship at the National Academy, and a 2009 CEC ArtsLink travel grant to paint community murals in Krasnoyarsk and St. Petersburg, Russia. She currently works as a muralist/teaching artist with STARR, Inc. and Kentler International Drawing Space/Red Hook Community Justice Center, and serves as Programs Manager at Smack Mellon Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn. See more of her work at www.katherinegressel.com

About the Artist: Jeremy Reed received his MA in Architecture from the City College of New York and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from the University of Virginia.  He is a LEED accredited professional, active in the AIA, and sits on the board of the CCNY Architecture Alumni Association.  He currently works as a practicing architect for Morris Adjmi Architects, and previously worked at Richard Dattner Architects.  He served as an editor for the recently updated Fifth Edition of the AIA Guide to the New York City and has held adjunct teaching positions in Architecture History at City College. See more of his work at www.reedjeremy.com.