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The Department of Space and Land
Reclamation organized a weekend campaign which took place on April
27, 28 and 29, 2001. Taking the "Che Guevarian " interpretation of
a campaign quite literally, projects manifested themselves in the streets,
parking lots, walls and corners of Chicago. The City became
our playground and public space, in all its complicated
interpretations, our field of investigation. As a point
of reference and interconnected mayhem, DSLR operated out
of a central hub: the Butcher Shop, a benevolent ad resource
center located at 1319 W. Lake Street. The Shop became a
site where participating artists/citizen/activists/21st
century renaissance types coalesced to discuss, get invigorated
by documentation, eat free food, produce work and most importantly,
reclaim public space and land.
DSLR highlighted various strategies of space reclamation.
The idea for this project came from a series of discussions
during which we, a small collective of responsible citizens,
recognized a pattern among a diverse range of art and activist
practices. From billboard manipulation to graffiti, from
pirate radio to loitering, spatial resistance is now at the
forefront. With private property (both physical and intellectual)
and systems of surveillance/control encroaching on every
aspect of daily life, projects of reclamation situate the
producer at a critical intersection of power. It is at this
nexus that we positioned the DSLR campaign. Not only did
we consider the presentation of these practices critical,
but more importantly was the establishing of social connections.
By focusing on the development of a community of resistance
among a wide array of cultural producers, we are able to
push forward a far more compelling and robust radical community.
DSLR feels that aesthetic practice adds flavor to the most
critical of political interests. Not particularly interested
in the rhetoric of radicality, we want a real multiracial,
polygendered extravaganza that is not ashamed to wear its
politics on its sleeve. The movement against globalization,
and direct action campaigns at home has provided some indication
that the din of resistance is growing. We felt presenting
new models of aesthetic resistance was critical in adding
some adrenaline to the stampede.
DSLR consisted of 59 reclamation projects and over 100 organizers. Each project
was carried out over the weekend and posted with a flag on the DSLR campaign
map of Chicago upon completion. Video documentation was edited at the hub and
presented on a wall of 24 monitors. The hub included stickers, posters, wheat
paste tools, spray paint and documentation. Graffiti crews CMK and FCT bombed
the walls of the hub to perfection. The projects involved were off the hook and
completely inspired participants to enter the world in a more frenetic manner.
Some projects used direct action to counter-attack the
current encroachment on public space. Fuz Fon, a collective
of Chicago artists Steve Anderson and Jonathan Crenshaw,
placed 'sonication modules" on various gentrifying corners of
Chicago. These devices, modified beer coolers with mini sound systems inside,
emanated sounds of feedback and sucking at specific locations such as yuppie
eateries, train platforms and Starbucks. The sonication modules were chained
to poles and fairly resistant to the beatings they received. In one incident,
a frustrated doorman took a tire iron to a module and successfully beat it to
death. Flotsam, a collective consisting of Edward Jay Rehm and Holen Kahn grappled
with anti-loitering laws. Their project, Loiter: See Conversation, consisted
of modifying a "no loitering" sign to read "LOITER." They
then placed the sign in front of City Hall along with a purple inflatable couch
and a donut-laden table. Also on the table was a card that simply bore the definitions
of loiter and conversation (the definitions are remarkably similar). As was the
case with many of the projects, Flotsam's lasted only about ten minutes. Soon
enough a security guard took down the sign and stared confusedly at the temporary
public living room. Though the project was brief, many passers-by grabbed a card
or donut and scratched their head at this peculiar state of affairs. At Wicker
Park, an ad hoc collection of poets called Poetic Vibrations read in the sun
while the Anarchist Football Association shot goals on their favorite corporate
villains. Chicago artist Ben Rubin wheatpasted beautiful two-color posters all
over the City that simply read "I think I shall never see." In the
background were cable television transmitters. What would a public space campaign
be without a wheat paste project?
Other projects were more hermetic in their design. Utilizing public space as
a place for ambiguous gestures, these projects relied on the alienating power
of public space to add credence to their aesthetics. Artist Yoshie Suzuki presented
her Vital X: Kissing Project. In various public and not so public spaces, Suzuki
invited men and women from all backgrounds and ages to make out with her on
video. She made out with people in video stores, K-Marts, Jewell Oscos, and
streetcorners. While at first the project sounds a tad flip, a viewer quickly
realizes the relationship of power redefined by the extremely small Suzuki.
In Ladder Mission Five, artist Curtis Olivera, went out in the middle of the
night and placed ladders on various barriers in the Chicago urban landscape.
Ladders over concrete dividers, ladders onto roofs, ladders over steel fences
and into a closed off terrain. The project was beautiful in its simplicity.
A giant trashball, created by Men and Women, was rolled down Chicago's bourgeois
shopping district on Michigan Avenue. En route it ran into several other reclamation
projects including a roving landfill, urban tree forts by Pirate Woodwork Inc.,
politically radical tarot reading by Aaron Gach, and the accompanying marching
band of Environmental Encroachment.
Organizing a campaign is quite different from curating an exhibition. While
exhibitions tend to focus on the objects within, a campaign focuses on the
world outside. Our goal wasn't to present artistic practice to an audience
but rather to engage in revolutionary activity by actively reclaiming the process
and decisions that control and determine our daily life. This effort is the
DSLR modus operandi. Trying to build on what has thankfully been called the
death of art, we want to shed the constraints of narrowly defined practice.
We aren't interested in the dialectic of aesthetics. Focusing on specific objects
belongs to the dead weight of modernist scrutiny and dissection. We want to
push action into a larger connected web that escapes the nausea of postmodern
intertextual bologna.
We believe that content in isolation is dead. Advertising has destroyed the
power of language and images and now artists who really want to affect change
must pursue new avenues. A temporary reprieve has been found in the actual
physical/virtual position one takes to power. Billboard manipulation, guerrilla
gardens, free food give-aways, graffiti and non-permitted preaching on the
comer all position themselves directly in opposition to power. It isn't so
much what the actions say that make them resonate, but that by dint of their
actual physical location, a viewer is privy to a level of social commitment.
In many regards, illegality becomes a fairly easy way of substantiating legitimacy.
For now, these strategies are blossoming among a new breed of radical artists,
but their time is limited (for anything is co-optable).
DSLR highlighted these strategies as a point of connection. We believe that
with a broad-based movement we can begin to formulate modes of existence that
break from the limiting constructs of capital. Ultimately, an entirely different
method of aesthetic/social integration needs to take place. Since the initial
campaign in April, DSLR has grown to almost 80 members. We recently were involved
in a major confrontation with MTV's hyper ludicrous Real World. On July 14th,
over 300 reclamators shut down a major street and attempted to liberate the
actors from their simulated existence. The event was ambiguous and ecstatic
and thus a success. And in August, DSLR will be using Chicago's tourist friendly
public art project, Suite Home Chicago (a project that followed the asinine
Cows on Parade) as an interventionist canvas. Shantytowns are being constructed
to fit over the city's photogenic couches with messages regarding the ever-present
housing crisis. These are a few strategies we are utilizing in Chicago. We
hope to make connections with other cities across the globe so our culture
of resistance can be self sustaining and formidable. New modes of existence
await.
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