4th International Biennale: Vestiges of Industry, Prague 2007
The Aesthetic and Social Usefulness of Rough Alternative Space
Comments delivered
by Dr. Dan Senn
Portland, Oregon
As I scanned the internet for information on the use of industrial sites for this conference, it became clear that there was no possibility of preparing a pretension of expertise on the subject on such short notice. While I advocate the sentiments of many presenters at this conference, what I know on the topic has developed from the perspective of an artist who has produced many events in various alternative and industrial spaces in the Pacific Northwest of the United States since the early 1990s--an area of the United States which was deeply scared by the abuses of 19th and 20th Century industrialization. But my interest in these locations, has never run to the complexities of preservation, even if some of my efforts have been used for this purpose by others. Frankly, I have never been interested in administrating such a transformation, for I am foremost an artist, and then a reluctant producer in search of opportunities for growth. A difficult venue is such an opportunity.
Also, while perusing the literature on American Brownfield projects,
a new term for me, the cultural differences in attitudes that
exist between The United States and eastern Europe quickly came
into focus. For example, in the US, and I presume is the case
throughout western Europe, the preservation movement is driven
by social liberals who, in my experience, are not necessarily
sympathetic to the cultural avant garde. With concerns more closely
linked to the environmental movement, they are not likely to cozy
up to the use of spoiled and risky old industrial spaces for the
sake of an artistic break through. Here are some examples from
the Czech Republic which stress the difference.
Two years ago I participated in the Kladno
Zaporno festival, curated by the Mamapapa organization, at
the Poldi steel factory site in Kladno, The Czech Republic, where
many edgy artistic interventions occurred on land and in buildings
that would give American preservationist and environmentalists
chemical fits. One participating ensemble from Grenoble, France,
called Ici-meme, cupped the ears and blind folded hundreds of
patrons while leading them one by one through an maze of broken
debris, pungently odored and discarded clothing, atop ground smelling
of old oil, urine and who-knows-what-else, and, as a patron myself,
enabled one of the richest aesthetic and other-worldy experiences
of my life. Thousands from Kladno, a city known more for its miners
than its intellectuals, attended a contemporary arts festival
and encountered what they would have otherwise never seen.
Above. Poldi in 2006, Kladno, The Czech Republic.
The possibility of holding such a festival, attended by thousands
of patrons, within a similar context in the US today is very unlikely.
This was also true of the 4+4+4
Days in Motion festival held in the center of Prague in 2006
in a building which had been closed for 20 years. Even so, large
numbers visited the house on Jungmannova in Prague where artists
young and old were pushed to make something useful of a very difficult
venue. (View
festival video).
My point here is that due to environmental, safety, and insurance
concerns, alternative events produced in countries like The Czech
Republic are unlikely to occur in the US, and that the American
cultural environment is seemingly unaware of the great disadvantage
of not providing its artists and citizens with unencumbered access
to what I call "rough alternative spaces". Yet, here
is a a rare exception.
In the mid 1990s, as Artistic Director of Newsense Intermedium,
I produced a festival with the old Municipal Dock building in
downtown Tacoma, Washington (View event at: www.newsense-intermedium.com/NI/munidock93/panhuysen93.html).
This building had been shut since the 1940s when it was used as
a docking station for a fleet of ferry boats and now was used
mostly by a large colony of wild cats. Yet, from an artistic and
acoustic perspective, the building was an extraordinary environment
and worth the struggle to procure insurance, and various permits
from the Health and Fire Department. Special wheel ramps needed
to be constructed along with exit staircases--with special
curved hand grips. The building was without electricity and
six portable toilets need to be brought in along with huge amounts
of drinking water. And limits were then placed on how many could
attend, and when thousands came, the clickers (counters) had no
choice but to turn their heads and join the performance (Read
more about this event).
Above. The Municipal Dock, Tacoma, 1993, the left side of building which once extended for 1 mile.
Above. The Municipal Dock, Tacoma, 1993: right side of the Tacoma
Municipal Dock.
Above. The Municipal Dock, Tacoma, 1993: wood from interior of building was recycled, using volunteer help, to bring up to city codes.
Above. The Municipal Dock, Tacoma, 1993: Paul Panhuysen's long
string instrument turned Municipal Dock into large acoustic wooden
instrument.
Growth Through Discomfort
My interest in RAS is therefore educational and aesthetic and
develops from an ideal rooted in American transcendentalist movement
of the 19th Century--that given an easy path to creative expression,
we tend only to express what we know, and that this is of little
value to ourselves or the society in which we live. John Cage,
with roots set squarely in this movement, once stated that "I
have nothing to say, and I'm saying it," a remark which is
at once playful, ironic and profound. What Cage was in fact saying
was something like "I have nothing in my conscious mind,
in my anger, resentments, fears or passions, that is of any artistic
value to me or to you. BUT I do have some interesting things to
show you." This perspective, which refers to and places process
above metaphor and meaning, also gives urgency the usefulness
of RAS as an exploritorium of artistic and cultural growth, one
which transcends the attributes of the refined white box gallery
we are more familiar with.
Here is a poem of mine, the text to a piece for percussion and
voice, which expresses these sentiments and, in a sense, pokes
fun at itself.
---
My interest in RAS stems from the belief that art exists as an
agent for change, first personal and then social, that it does
not exist to entertain, even if often entertains, and that as
an artist I have nothing of political or emotional value to share
with others even if my mind is chuck full of both. That because
of this, I am most interest in enabling responses to my work which
is unique to each patron (and to myself as I transfer to the role
of a patron once the process is complete). I am not concerned
with controlling interpretation of my work and that, in most instances,
art which intensionally expresses the least has a potential for
expressing the most. RAD, old industrial spaces, Brownfield projects,
are especially useful to me in this regard because of their inherent
complexity and awkwardness, or what I think of as their "opacity,"
that useful quality which obstructs and even prevents an artist
from easy communication.
In conclusion, here is a short section of a recent film of mine call "A House on Jungmannova" which documents the integration of the arts into a very unique alternative space in the center of Prague in May of 2006.