Park(ing) Day: Public space for whom? |

Artists, remedy Jeff Eisenberg and Kristen Wilkens make up the collaborative M0bile Pr4ctice. Their November exhibition at Swarm Gallery, featured multi-media works and four large scale pencil drawings by Eisenberg. M0bil Pr4actice came together during a teaching gig in Crawfordsville, IN where both artists were Visiting Assistant Professors during 2009. Jeff spent the following summer at a residency in Rhyolite, NV and Wilkens took the great American road trip in a 60’s Airstream trailer. Inspired by their collective experiences in Indiana and their subsequent summer travels, they collaborated to create the work in this show.

M0bile Pr4ctice created a new-media piece called Stake Your Claim, comprised of a video game—programmed in by Wilkens in Flash, reminiscent of a mid-90s video game—side scrolling, simple and flat images, with no 3D modeling and limited movement. Stake Your Claim is a charmingly nihilistic game, with a raspy voiced narrator (matching the sound emitting from a plastic camp fire in the main gallery with the narrators endless monologue) and no real outcome. When you start the game, you are a shopping cart and must collect enough money to become a donkey. After becoming a donkey, you can go to the mines and mine for gold and more gold. The piece was inspired by the crash of the housing market and the endless quest to make more money and buy more things that is so insidious in Western culture—where does the collection of stuff get you? Back in debt according to Stake Your Claim.

In addition to the video installation, they also created a Swap Meet where visitors in the gallery can swap their goods for one of a variety of small paper sculptures made by M0bile Pr4ctice. The models are computer generated objects of the everyday that mimic much of the imagery in Stake Your Claim: mini-airstream mobile homes, various small buildings, shopping carts, donkeys, house additions, etc. all between two and twelve inches. Each model came with a set of instructions for what the artists wanted in exchange, most of the demands were not too labor intensive and were things like make a small drawing of a lightning bolt or a cow skull made of masking tape. The idea is to engage the gallery patron in the art making process and encourage people to trade with the artists. If you are not up to making your own art, flat posters of the Swap Meet models are available for purchase behind the gallery counter.

Implicit in this barter system is the question of relative use value and artistic creation. What is more valuable an object mass-produced by the artists’ laser printer or a unique one-off object created by the participant? Does the fact that an artist created an object make it more valuable—their designation as artist contributing to its value even though it could be easily reproduced. In some ways the artists get a better deal as the objects they get in return have more personal investment and are truly unique. The reproducibility of this installation and the relatively low cost of staging it creates a certain
flimsiness to it—paper objects will easily be destroyed, the real value to the piece is (in theory) the experience of participation.

Eisenberg also had four architectural hybrid drawings. Each piece was rendered in pencil and contained a mish-mash of building typologies, as well as images that are consistent with his personal symbology: the god’s eye with a speaker, feathers from a string, and piles of interspersed twigs. A modernist house, a bank, and factories are the most identifiable elements that are then built upon, reminding one of overgrown mutant buildings that can’t decide whether to be architecture or collapsible rubble overgrown with cut logs and twigs. Each building seemed squatted by nomads, modified by the will and needs of the new occupants.

In addition to the drawings, there was a large painting on the wall assembled of cut and painted mylar . The piece contains donkeys with Airstream caravans on their backs trailing away from an open-pit mine. The piece is mural-sized and paints a strange landscape—as if taken from a science-fiction story. Eisenberg’s imagery was inspired by his experience at a residency near Rhyolite, NV where he was surrounded by abandoned strip mines and freely roaming feral donkeys.

The art work of M0bile Pr4ctice and Eisenberg’s solo drawings works in a convincing manner to describe the precarity of the market and the frivolity of the endless pursuits of commodity consumption, but the critique stops there.

This show just closed but Eisenberg/Wilkens/M0bile Pr4ctice will have pieces in the upcoming Swarm Gallery show “Things are Expanding” opening on Dec 10th.

Artists, price
Jeff Eisenberg and Kristen Wilkens make up the collaborative M0bile Pr4ctice. Their November exhibition at Swarm Gallery, featured multi-media works and four large scale pencil drawings by Eisenberg. M0bil Pr4actice came together during a teaching gig in Crawfordsville, IN where both artists were Visiting Assistant Professors during 2009. Jeff spent the following summer at a residency in Rhyolite, NV and Wilkens took the great American road trip in a 60’s Airstream trailer. Inspired by their collective experiences in Indiana and their subsequent summer travels, they collaborated to create the work in this show.

This show just closed but Eisenberg/Wilkens/M0bile Pr4ctice will have pieces in the upcoming Swarm Gallery show “Things are Expanding” opening on Dec 10th.

Artists, ampoule Jeff Eisenberg and Kristen Wilkens make up the collaborative M0bile Pr4ctice. Their November exhibition at Swarm Gallery, remedy featured multi-media works and four large scale pencil drawings by Eisenberg. M0bil Pr4actice came together during a teaching gig in Crawfordsville, IN where both artists were Visiting Assistant Professors during 2009. Jeff spent the following summer at a residency in Rhyolite, NV and Wilkens took the great American road trip in a 60’s Airstream trailer. Inspired by their collective experiences in Indiana and their subsequent summer travels, they collaborated to create the work in this show.

This show just closed but Eisenberg/Wilkens/M0bile Pr4ctice will have pieces in the upcoming Swarm Gallery show “Things are Expanding” opening on Dec 10th.

In 2005, visit
San Francisco-based REBAR, information pills
came up with the idea for Park(ing) Day. REBAR describes itself as “an interdisciplinary studio operating at the intersection of art, design and activism.” Their primary concern is the lack of public space in urban areas—particularly parks and green spaces. Park(ing) Day’s main focus is to promote the visibility of urban green space. This is done by staging a coordinated one-day event with different groups of people across the city; squatting parking spaces, and putting in temporary parks and installations. The first Park(ing) day was just REBAR, some grass, pamphlets, and a parking space. This has evolved into what it is now, an “open-source” and international event with participants from 140 cities in over twenty countries. The content and composition of the parks vary based on the local culture and context. In the Bay the Park(ing) consisted of pop-up shops, hang-out spaces, and soapboxes for would-be politicians.

Park(ing) Day is a celebration of utopian notions of street life and commerce at the expense of day-to-day street life and commerce. It represents one side of a line dividing acceptable (recuperable) street culture and dangerous (illicit) street culture. It explicitly is about the greening of space and building awareness of environmental policies like park planning or car culture. There is an important role for parks in our cities and the greening of space is clearly a desirable outcome. Additionally, the widening of the public sphere, opening up spaces for discussion seems a worthwhile cause. However, lurking under the surface of Parking Day, there is a feeling of disingenuousness. The issue at hand is what kind of space is being reclaimed and for whom? Is life on the street a singular event, a parade to enjoy and forget or is it an everyday struggle negotiating the conditions of survival?

Street life has always been a vibrant part of the cultural sphere. Everyday, street vendors operate with or without a permit, selling things from vans, food from carts, and trinkets from blankets. Performers entertain the passerby hoping to garner enough change for a meal. In many places around the world open air markets are the norm rather than the enclosed and air-conditioned box stores and shopping malls. Begging is common both here and elsewhere. Vendors take their wares to the sidewalks sometimes in opposition to the established shops and restaurants. This form of commerce is outside of the control of the state and therefore the state profits less from it. It is sometimes seen as threatening to the bottom line or at the very least a nuisance that needs to be controlled. In contrast, many Park(ing) Day participants are insiders to the planning and decision-making processes of the city.

Based on the North American experience, Participants who Park are class-homogenous: creative professionals, architecture and design firms, eco-warriors, and trendy businesses collectively taking-it-to the-streets. This model of what is possible is so limited as to be laughable. The problem is the latent message of Park(ing) Day—the reform of city planning policies is a specialized discussion, with specialized roles, rules, and a dialogue happening amongst only a small number of experts. For all the talk of public participation, what this amounts to is a PR Stunt in an urban reform campaign. A fun and potentially interesting campaign but nonetheless a specialized group of people having a specialized and ongoing dialog vis-à-vis the politicians and planners.

The whole show, despite drawing in spectators, circumscribes the real life of the street to what amounts to class visibility for young urban professionals. And since yuppies are already quite visible in public space (except in certain areas where they may be afraid to show their faces) the point of Park(ing) is somewhat moot. This is no different in effectiveness than a peace march, a spectacle for the sake of spectacle and a dialogue between like-minded people for their own entertainment. This act of temporarily privatizing public space and publicizing private space runs counter to the everyday life and needs of the street. Public space is just that, public and as such involves all classes, races and backgrounds. This real “public sphere of the street” needs visibility and thoughtful consideration.

There are numerous critical issues on the streets that these creative types could be tackling. The issue of homelessness is front-and-center in this discussion. To those at the top, a homeless encampment is dangerous. In our society, parks and alleys are also homes for people who cannot afford housing or access the intentionally limited low-income programs. Camping on the streets is viewed as an improper use of public space. With this impropriety comes the issue of police harassment for “quality-of-life” violations—a top-down enforcement of a particular moral order of acceptable use. Most activity labeled “crime” related to poverty is manifested and most visible on the street. It is this top-down ordering of the street that Park(ing) Day tacitly supports.

By way of analog, Park(ing) Day’s squatting for dialogue versus squatting for a roof over ones head serves the same purpose as the recuperation of graffiti into street art. Graffiti, an illegal act done by outsiders became popularized and institutionalized. It turns the life outside of the state into a permissible (and thus controllable) form-of–life. Parking Day draws this line of acceptable versus unacceptable use of the street and serves to civilize the unruly public sphere of street life.

In addition to providing green space parks are often home to the few publicly available toilets, although they are often closed. Public restrooms are as great a necessity in the city as green space or better public transportation. Installing temporary free toilets would be a great use of a parking space or two instead of lawn chairs and pamphlets.

These interventions come at a time when public services by the state have been grossly scaled back. Poverty and survival is the day to day reality of the urban sphere. This shouldn’t be taken as a call for an activist response but for a rationed self-critical view of ones place on the street.

The public culture that Park(ing) Day represents is a particular set of aspirations and goals for the receding middle class. It seems telling that these progressive culture-warriors are often the same ones who support blight ordinances, top-down city planning, and believe in the viability and desirability of reformism. In other regions and other contexts an event like Park(ing) day has the potential for something more interesting and less recuperable—events like these may actually spark more tangible changes in the urban order.