The event was later broadcasted as a documentary on NBC in the Bay Area and received lots of news coverage locally and nationally
In a modern context, would television broadcasting be the most effective method of sharing this event? Or could newer forms of media, particularly social medias such as Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, etc. be utilized?
A dia-logue such as this could provide a chance for the residents of the Powderhorn Park and greater 9th Ward area an opportunity to engage in a conversation about the needs of the community, and perhaps to reach some sort of consensus about pressing issues that might make good topics for future conversations, perfor-mances, classes, workshops, etc.
In the context of Minneapolis, it might be worth thinking about the diameters of the conversation. Should it be guided in a certain direction, or allowed to flow freely?
The Roof is on Fire provides an excellent model that can be used and expanded upon in other communities.
here is a link to Lacy's talk We Are Here, which shows her talking about her recent retrospective on her work and what she thinks about her career. I have also linked an article about the retrospective exhibit at SFMoMa. These resources can add more perspective on the works and how it has aged in the public eye as well as in Lacy's eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ws_EmQCPI
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13855794/we-are-here-suzanne-lacy-ybca-sfmoma
but the work led to further projects that aimed to explore some of the most press-ing issues they spoke of.
the generative nature of this work could be never-ending, with each new project tackling a new issue and bringing up more questions that can be explored further in new pieces.
Another per-tinent issue was sexual relations and teen pregnancy, which was explored further in the project titled Expectations.
here is a link to the video of Expectations , available on Vimeo.
Police relationships with youth in the area were identified as a particu-larly relevant issue, thus leading to the creation of a police train-ing film, and a larger project called Code 33 that also tackled police relationships with youth in the community
here are links to the video about police and youth relations, as well as the video of Code 33. Both are available on Vimeo.
There was a very strong youth culture present that Lacy aimed to tap into, engaging inner-city youth, many of whom were people of color, in a conversation that challenged the media’s por-trayal of them.
here is a link to an interview Suzanne Lacy did where she explains her motivations behind this project and subsequent projects.
The project was heavily supported by the Oakland Unified School Dis-trict
what are the implications of collaborating with a school district? What new doors could it open, and how could it possibly inhibit the project goals?
which led to the per-formance known as The Roof is on Fire.
here is the link to the recording of The Roof is on Fire which is available on Vimeo.
The Roof is on Fire was the first of several public displays or-chestrated by Suzanne Lacy in collaboration with the Oakland Public School District in the 1990s.
Here is a link to brief descriptions of these projects on Lacy's website.
produced by masses that make some parts of the city disappear and exaggerate others, distorting it, fragmenting it, and diverting it from its immobile or
what parts of the city would remain?
The ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walk—an elementary form of this experience of the city; they ar
could it be said that people "down below", the masses of people, are more in tune with the city than those who gaze down on it?
When one goes up there, he leaves behind the mass that carries off and mixes up in itself any identity of authors or spectators.
interesting to think about this concept of the rich being up high with the masses down below, and how that can almost be physically represented by buildings
ut this was part of the life of the Village I knew a decade after she wrote her book.
speaks to the dissonance between different peoples perception of the same city
But the point of cruising, or at least one point of cruising, is feeling yourself alone and anonymous in the city, feeling that the city belongs to you, to you and maybe a chanced-upon someone like you-at
interesting to compare this sought after sense of individuality with the community based goals of the situationists
But New York was a very different city four decades ago.
does the psychogeography change as the city changes? or is there a sense of permanence in a place due to its certain unchanging physical elements
The automobile is at the heart of this general propaganda, both as supreme good of an alienated life and as essential product of the capitalist market: It is generally being said this year that American economic prosperity is soon going to depend on the success of the slogan "Two cars per family."
interesting to compare car culture in america to the idea of rugged individualism
but it should be noted that the last hours of the night are generally unsuitable for derives.
could this be because of the lower chance of seeing other people, which add a certain "lived in" and human quality that are important for the psychogeography of a place?
literary communism.
could this also be described as artistic or visual communism?
They stress that no constructive action was considered, since they all agreed that the most urgent task is to clear the ground.
this can relate to the concept of detournement and derive
But they generally simply assume that elegant streets cause a fe eling of satisfaction and that poor streets are depressing, and let it go at that.
interesting to consider the viewpoint of the author in asserting that people view poor streets as depressing...would residents of poor neighborhoods think this about their neighborhoods / where they live, or is this the view of upper classes looking down on them?
It has long been said that the desert is monotheistic. Is it illogical or devoid of interest to observe that the district in Paris between Place de la Contrescarpe and Rue de l' Arbalete conduces rather to atheism, to oblivion and to the disorientation of habitual reflexes?
is this a result of the land itself, or the people and socieities that have inhabited the area? Or could it be a mixture of both?
a short description of the protest is available on the spot in the English, German, Hebrew, Russian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Hungarian languages. This explains why the anti-monument is on the route of guided tours and visited by individual travellers as well (Photo 9)
this brings the question of "who is a monument for?" into play; does it have to be successful for the people it serves, and who inhabit the place where the monument exists? or in this age of globalism, does it also have to appeal to everyone else (certainly American / Western centric)?
memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premise of the monument’ (Y
this kind of reminds me of the John F. Kennedy Art Center in DC, which is intended to be a lively, constantly changing and growing cultural and artistic mecca rather than a static monument
I argue that a memorial site’s public acceptance and success is correlated with its capacity to e
and this is definitely something that changes over time
The budget for architecture is a hundred times the budget for public art because a building provides jobs and products and services that augment the finances of a city.
could it be true that public art through architecture is a way to sort of get around the system that prioritizes functionality and infiltrate those spaces?
But the choice of inside or outside, of private or public, is outdated now. In an electronic age, you have all the informa- tion of the city-the information of one city after another, of one city piled upon another city-at your fingertips, on a computer terminal, in the privacy of your own home.
so by this logic, does it matter if a space is inside or outside in the modern era? in the age zoom, does it even matter if a public space exists in the physical realm at all?
A person might come here specifically for a service that, as a by-product, inserts that person into a group of people seeking the same service; or the person might come here primarily to be part of a group,
interesting to think about this intersection between capitalism and community; the desire to consume can be used to form a sense of community
Private space becomes public when the public wants it; public space becomes private when the public that has it won't give it
who counts as the public? anyone who wants to? peoole that were born and raised there? people who have just moved there? people who's family has been there for centuries? people who just like the area?
right-a place made public by force
As a result of the changes to our societal structure, there must be a decisive effort on behalf of other people (and others?)
the quartz watch that was no trouble to make and no worry to wear, the cheap wristwatch you could buy for two or three dollars off-the-shelf and on-the-street. The wristwatch was no longer an expensive graduation present, no longer a reward for a lifetime of service to the corporation. Time came cheap now; you picked up a watch like a pack of matches as you walked down Canal Street. Watches were instant fashion, you chose one to suit your every mood.
this appears to be a comment on the era of mass consumption of material goods, some of the same themes that various art movements such as pop art have picked up on. This can even be paired with the concept of individualism and subsequent lack of community that has been increased by the consumption based, capitalist society we live in.