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On a late April morning I watched
as a purple inflatable furniture set slowly came to life beneath
the bemused gaze of the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza in
downtown Chicago. The loveseat, chair, and ottoman were then
carfied across the street by members of the artist collective
Flotsam and installed on a large green Astroturf rug in a
cozy exterior niche of City Hall. Small cards with printed
definitions of "conversation" on
one side and "loiter" on
the other (definitions which bore a remarkable similarity
to one another) lay on the ottoman together with an enticing
box of Krispy Kreme donuts. Mounted above the loveseat was
a faux city sign that read LOITER.
Pedestrians immediately began to gather-reading the cards, sampling
the donuts, or for the especially weary and adventurous, trying out the
comfortable-though-displaced furniture. Within 15 minutes, however, security
and police began streaming out of City Hall; they quickly removed the
sign and prevented people from sitting on the furniture. I continued
to munch on a donut (which the police scrupulously avoided) as the puzzled
guards disassembled the LOITER zone. In less than 30 minutes, normalcy
was restored to the busy sidewalk.
As I crossed back to Daley Plaza,
I encountered a ramshackle tree fort constructed by Allan Bailey and
David Merrit, who encouraged people to reclaim some trace of their
childhood by clambering into their rickety structure. Also in the plaza,
the 'Tarotist" Aaron Gach practiced
one part of his "militant occultism": free tarot readings with
a socially transformative agenda. So began my three-day drift
through the Department of Space and Land Reclamation (DSLR) Campaign
organized by Emily Forman, Josh MacPhee, and Nato Thompson, which brought
together a bevy of artists, activists, and enthusiasts intent on at least
temporarily altering the corporatist and consumerist psychogeography
of Chicago.
More than 60 projects under the
rubric of DSLR took place during the last weekend of April. Strategically
intervening in controlled public spaces, the artists imaginatively
facilitated activities that were at once playful and critical. Inside
the DSLR headquarters at the Butcher Shop (a gallery and studio space
located in the meatpacking district), markers pinned to a blown-up
wall map of the city identified targeted locations. Small flags were
clustered in congested locales such as the Magnificent Mile, Daley
Plaza, the Loop, Wicker Park, and Logan Square. The Butcher Shop functioned
as a hub for the diverse array of projects, events, and participants
that shaped the campaign. Open 24 hours a day for three consecutive
days, the collective space was often crowded with people eating, dancing,
scheming, or recharging on plush "vintage" couches
after late-night "reclamation" raids comprised of wheat pasting
and graffiti crews. An assortment of projects, proposals, and literature
were laid out on card tables, surrounded by flamboyantly tagged walls
compliments of local graffiti artists. I found myself at a self-defense
station assembled by Stacy Switzer, where I made a stylish "domestic
holster" with matching wristbands using orange plastic straps, duct
tape, Velcro, a steak knife, and Raid roach spray. Armed with
my can of Raid, I found my way through the space to a tower of monitors
to watch video clips of various street projects that were continually
fed into the hub throughout the campaign. One of the screens played a
tape of Yoshie Suzuki passionately kissing strangers at Jewel-Osco and
Kmart as part of her quirky and romantic Vital X: Kissing Project. On
Saturday afternoon Michigan Avenue shoppers watched an oversized Trashball
being rolled down the Magnificent Mile by a uniformed crew. The march
began at the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Art (much to museum
guards' dismay) and ended in front of the Art Institute of Chicago: a
less-than-subtle commentary linking excessive consumption and fine-art
institutions.
Throughout the weekend I was surrounded
by people committed to challenging the loss of public space to consumerist
culture, and appearing to be thoroughly enjoying themselves in the
process. Informed by teach-in type panel discussions, and nurtured
by home-cooked meals served from enormous vats onto paper plates, we
chatted and ate to the sounds of "Guerilla
Love Radio" broadcasting continuously from the hub. Freed from the
usual rigid gallery etiquette of exhibition openings, I was
reminded of loft parties and raves from my college days. But fortunately,
the political aims of the DSLR campaign far exceeded the aspirations
of my college crowd.
Alice Kim is a writer living in Chicago.
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