Out of Site Exhibition Catalogue

OUT OF SITE 03.09-04.09.2017 AKOAKI SAINT ÉTIENNE INTERNATIONAL DESIGN BIENNALE

OUT OF SITE

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE | DETROIT

Curators

JEAN LOUIS FARGES, ANYA SIROTA Graphic Designer

SAM OKOLITA Drawings

TAYLOR MONTGOMERY, SAM OKOLITA, JONATHAN WATKINS,

SALAM RIDA, LISA KUHN, MICHAEL TURVIN, PATRICK ETHEN,

IAN DONALDSON Photography

ANNE-LAURE LECHAT, AKOAKI, DOUG COOMBE, JACOB LEWKOW, PIPER

CARTER, KIRK DONALDSON, DETROIT SOUND CONSERVANCY Words

BRYCE DETROIT, INGIRD LAFLEUR, ANYA SIROTA, JAVIER TORRES,

GINA REICHERT, MARSHA MUSIC, HILLARY EDESSES, CHRISTOPHER

HOLDER, JULIEN DOURGNON, CEZANNE CHARLES, SHARANYA PAI,

JEAN LOUIS FARGES, ALIA BENABDELLAH, IMANI SMITH www.akoaki.com Contributors Marsha Music, Bryce Detroit, Ingrid LaFleur, Gina Reichert, Christopher Holder, Cezanne Charles, Julien Dourgnon, Javier Torres, Hillary Edesses, Alia Benabdellah, Anya Sirota, Jean Louis Farges, Jerry Hebron, Billy Hebron, Imani Smith, Constance King, Carol Trowell, Stephen Gliatto, James Lesko, Linda Carter, John Carter, Duminie Deporres, Emily Rogers, Ashley Nelson, Ceclia Sharpe, DJ los, Dana Hart, Ian Tran, Anne Marie Choike, Christophe Ponceau, Efe Bes + IBM, Onyx Ashanti Thanks To Knight Foundation, ArtPlace America, Creative Many, Ford Foundation, Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, University of Michigan Office of Research OUT OF SITE CATALOGUE: ISSN 8765 9721 Published By: ONE MILE 7615 OAKLAND STREET DETROIT MI, 48211 http://www.onemile.us/ Contact sirota@akoaki.com

Special Thanks To Josyane Franc, Olivier Peyricot, Bryce Detroit, Katy Locker, Cezanne Charles, Olga Stella, Inge Eller, Olivier Suc, Sharon Haar, Robin Wagner, Robert Fishman

distributed by Saint Etienne BIennale

Printed by Print-Tech, Inc, Michigan

AKOAKI

Architecture and Design

2014 Civic Friche Vol. 1 Journal of emergent urbanity.

2015 Civic Friche Vol.2 Journal of emergent urbanity.

2015 One Mile Magazine Vol. 1 Best in art, design, music, and new economy from epic Detroit’s North End

2016 One Mile Magazine Vol. 2 Best in art, design, music, and new economy from epic Detroit’s North End

Imaging Detroit Program The IMAGING DETROIT program guide/ project catalogue. Between September 21st and 22nd, 2012 the Metropolitan Observatory for Digital Culture and Representation hosted unprecedented open assessment and contemporary anthology of Detroit as local and global image.

2013 Electroform(alism) Electroform(alism) is a an ongoing collaborative experiment. It explores hybrid ways of making, coupling nineteenth century plating techniques with contemporary fabrication. Think Victorians meet digital design. Technically, aesthetically, materially and economically, the possibilities are exciting. This is our work in progress.

2012 My Love For You Burns All The Time Exhibit of Piranesian Bling from Detroit’s Iconic Packard Plant.

2016 Ex-qui-site Corb Catalog This exhibition explores an undocumented private house, the Menuiserie Sylva, in the French town of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. This vernacular house cum architectural test site is so outwardly banal that it remained virtually invisible for more than half a century.

Akoaki is a Detroit-based architecture and design studio founded by Anya Sirota and Jean Louis Farges. Since 2008, Akoaki has established a reputation for innovative and resonant projects that critically engage the social, spatial, and material realities of place. Bridging the commonly perceived divide between social and aesthetic practice, the work explores urban interventions, perceptual scenographies, and pop actions as responses to complex and contested urban scenarios.

Akoaki’s design philosophy recognizes the pleasure and value of collective, aesthetic experience. The creative process, supported by intensive research and fieldwork, builds on existing dynamics and forges relationships between diverse networks of people. The resulting set of inter-related experimental works produces conceptually and materially surprising, unrestrictive, and inclusive environments.

Design, in this approach, is above all as a mode of public discourse. To that end, we create publications: accessible and glossy ones. These tell the stories of how design can create impact in a broad range of scenarios.

OUT OF SITE Out of Site is an exercise in transposition. It starts with three objects as alibis: a space vehicle, an institutional arch and a stage set. Each architecturally scaled artifact is a mobile signifier.

Each is designed to amplify neighborhood activity and to broadcast locally-rooted culture, aesthetics, and narratives. Each helps tell stories that would otherwise go unheard. Conceived in response to collaborative efforts with a broad network of artists, performers, farmers, musicians, and urban activists, these objects, as carefully calibrated and self-reflexive scenographies, are triggers for popactions and social experiences. The objects, over the course of the past three years, have been set in motion: tested and deployed in Detroit’s historic North End. They come to Saint-Etienne ‘used’, along with the people who helped activate them, and testimonies about how they work and to what end.

This catalogue is a small sample of thoughts and reflections about design in Detroit from the people who have influenced, inspired, prodded, and mobilized the effort.

Detroit has become associated with a distinct creative attitude, urbane opportunity, and new types of artful production. The rise of Detroit’s renaissance image has, on the one hand, helped catapult the city into the international limelight, with artists and entrepreneurs becoming increasing self-aware of its unique, authenticating brand. On the other hand, the same resurgence has threatened to delete important evidence of Detroit’s distinct Afro-diasporic cultural heritage, its counter-histories, and working class narratives. Against this backdrop of urban transformation, Akoaki has been exploring new ways design can catalyze positive and equitable change. Deploying social and collective pop actions in complex and economically unsettled urban scenarios, the approach emphasizes design’s capacity to shift perception and prototype methods that bring the city’s underexposed sites and stories to life. Through radically collaborative processes with Detroit’s leading cultural advocates, site-specific research, and focus on locally-rooted activity, the effort reveals how Detroiters are re-imagining ways to work, live, and create. At the Saint Etienne Biennale, Akoaki’s recent endeavors produced in collaboration with musicians, performers, urban farmers, moral investors, and cultural advocates take the form of three original installations deployed first in Detroit. Once activated in neighborhood sites, the installations along with the city’s top cultural trailblazers are transplanted to St. Etienne, where the conversation about Detroit’s unique culture continues through a series of public performances, events, and experimental activities.

In this way, the Out of Site exhibit aims to put Detroiters front and center in the production of the city’s image, demonstrating that design’s greatest impact is in dialogue with people.

The Out of Site catalogue is part back-story, part document, and part future projection. It shares the thoughts and impressions of just some of the exceptional people who have instigated, influenced, and activated the installations featured at the Biennale. Their work is intentionally transforming the image of Detroit from a tabula rasa to be occupied to a rich and multiplicitous cultural landscape to be venerated for its creative audacity both despite and on account of the city’s persisting urban challenges.

We hope you enjoy.

AKOAKI

CONTENTS

The Transplants

Anne-Laure Lechat Detroit Afrikan Funkestra

Bryce Detroit Snap to it

Jean Louis Farges Detroit is the Future

Ingird LaFleur Behind That Detroit Sound

Alia Benabdellah Placemaking: Your Place or Mine?

Javier Torres Nomadic Detroit Culture Council

Gina Reichert The Politics of Aesthetics

Anya Sirota Layover

Julien Dourgnon The North End

Marsha Music Making It

Christopher Holder Cultivating at the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm

Hillary Edesses Extra-Disciplinary (on Purpose), at Scale

CĂŠzanne Charles

THE TRANSPLANTS PHOTO ESSAY BY ANNE-LAURE LECHAT

LECHAT IS A SWISS PHOTOGRAPHER WHO’S VISUAL APPROACH OCCUPIES A SPACE BETWEEN DOCUMENTATION AND ART. COOL, DISTANCED, AND EXPERTLY CONSTRUCTED, HER IMAGES PRODUCE A CALIBRATED GAP BETWEEN THE REAL AND THE REPRESENTATIONAL. CALLING INTO QUESTION MATERIAL OBJECTIVITY IN AN INCINDENTAL WORLD, HER WORK IS FILLED WITH OBJECTS, PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS, CAPTURED RELATIONALLY WITH COMPOSITIONAL NON-CHALANCE. “THE TRANSPLANTS” IS A BRIEF PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY, A FIRST GLIMPSE, THE OUT OF SITES INSTALLATIONS TRANSPLANTED FROM DETROIT TO THE ST ETIENNE BIENNALE COURTYARD. QUIETLY, THE AWAIT THE OPENING PARTY.

CONVERSATION WITH BRYCE DETROIT

DETROIT AFRIKAN FUNKESTRA WORDS : PHOTOGRAPHY:

Johnathan Watkins Doug Coombes

Bryce Detroit is an evolutionary emcee and a Detroit pioneer of Entertainment Justice and 21stCenturyHipHop. A national award-winning music producer, curator and co-founder of Detroit Afrikan Music Institution, the ONE Mile Project, and founder of Detroit Recordings Co., he uses entertainment arts and community cultural legacies to promote new Afrikan and Indigenous narratives, cultural literacies, and new cooperative music economies. Jonathan Watkin sat down with Detroit to discuss his compositions, his recent work with the Detroit Afrikan Funkestra, and how music can transmit complex philosophical concepts intuitively.

Let’s talk about the Detroit African Funkestra. Is it performance?

A social experiment?

The Detroit African Funkestra is a performance. It is us coming from a ancestral framework, where music is seen as form of storytelling and is used for the purpose of conveying identity, emotions, experiences through sound. So the Funkestra is a mechanism of ancestral story telling.

Is that participatory?

100% participatory. And by 100% I mean this: of course there is audience engagement, shout out my hip hop aesthetic, the audience is engaged to actually present their own stories. From our standpoint, every one of us is a griot, and it is through our words, it through our voice, that we actually speak our identity into existence.

We speak our reality into being, with the Funkestra we intentionally create space where we are practicing this cultural behavior.

What types of stories do people tell?

All types. One thing about the Funkestra is our intention to uplift the stories of Detroit’s diasporic cultural legacy. We get stories about people talking about “I remember being 10 years old, in this place, having this experience” all the way too “...my memory of this entire place looking like this, in this type of culture, and the types of activities” all the way to “ ...this is my story about the way that I want to see myself in this space because of an experience, be it positive or negative, but this is my projection of what I want my future in this space to look like”. So we get the past, the now, as well as the Afrofuturist projection.

So is it an Afrofuturist ensemble?

Aesthetically we can definitely say it is an Afrofuturist ensemble. It is right in line with my own personal aesthetic: diasporic African dopeness. We are intentionally taking it further - broadcasting and representing the beauty of high design and fashion in ancestral African culture.

Is that important for Detroit? I mean for people who don’t know Detroit and who discover that it might me the most important diasporic African city in the G8, why is it important to create performances, events, and designs that deploy this type of aesthetic sensibility?

It is vital in a place like Detroit because we have this phenomenon, this decade old phenomenon, where we see a top down intention to erase cultural identity and legacy via the demolition of physical infrastructure. It is the architecture that has for the past 100 years literally been the physical place where diasporic African, and indigenous, culture was created, experimented. All of these things, the activities, the music, the family socials, all of these happened in the built environment.

When you have, be it, decades old policies from the 20th century, like urban renewal, or now this brand of irreverent demolition. When you have these types of circumstances, supported from a narrative standpoint by main stream media outlets, we experience invisibilization and erasure of

the Detroit African identity and legacy through strategic narrative.

It becomes absolutely vital as a mechanism of maintaining of one’s being in space and time. It becomes vital to project through programming, narrative, and through visual representation to project and promote these identities.

Do you compose music or do you compose social experiences?

And both. We compose social experience through music Could you tell us a little bit about some of the musicians you work with? Who is the Efe Bes behind the mask? Who is DJ Los? Who have you brought together to perform this amazing social experiment?

B: The Detroit African Funkestra is an ensemble made up of the most cutting edge and pioneering Detroit music creators, spanning the last 25 years for sure. For instance, DJ Los, who as a Detroit hip hop legend, the first Detroit artist to produce a full length album, and to sell tens of thousands of units independently. Him being the son of Carl “Butch” Small, famed percussionist from Parliament Funkadelic, he represents the bridge between the city’s funk legacy and contemporary hip hop. Then we have players like Efe Bes, the number 1 drum, who as a new African instrumentalist has been evolving and elevating our perception around what African drums can do. In addition, we are just really pushing the envelope on ways that quote on quote “that black people can represent themselves through music.”

And then there are the strings...

Yes, we have Cecilia Sharpe and Ashley Nelson, we have Ian Tran.

And the wild guitar?

We have Parliament Funkadelic alumni member lead guitarist, Duminie De Porres. We have P-funk alumni Gabe Gonzalez. We have world traveled and cutting edge bassist Emily Rogers. The ensemble is crazy and the legacy that they represent, as well as the innovation they symbolize, is just unparalleled.

I can’t help but compare you in some ways to Sun Ra and the Arkestra - not as far as sound or technique goes - but in the capacity of music to create environments that surpass the material realities of place, that take collective experience somewhere else. You could say that Sun Ra was totally untethered: he was from Saturn and he flew very high. By contrast, Bryce Detroit is a social activists, an entertainment justice activist, who is grounded in the material realities of the city.

Absolutely, necessarily so.

Why is being grounded so important to you?

For me personally that is imperative because the work is intended to support people and their place. In order to do so, it is necessary to root one’s self in that place, and develop a process and procedure for authentically engaging. Really what authentic engagement looks like first, is actively listening as much as possible, as to really be aware and fully present in the identities, in the culture that exists in that place, and from there we can design space or programming. We can design these things that are 100% culturally literate and politically astute and bottom line relevant to the uniqueness of that scenario. Because there is no cookie cutter scenario. This is not a homogenized situation, you cannot homogenize these communities, and say that this top-down template will work. It won’t work.

For the 10th addition for the Saint-Étienne Biennale the theme is work: new paradigms of work. The way you work in Detroit is quite unique. It traverses so many disciplines. You collaborate broadly. Is it complicated to identify yourself as a particular expert or is that no longer an issue. Once you get to a certain collaborative level of engagement, you are a designer of your own identity and your own work across disciplines.

That’s a great question. On one level it was first necessary for me to define my work, which is where the phraseology entertainment justice originates from. It is a unique intention to pursue entertainment arts, in particular music, for the point of uplifting culture, legacy, identity, all to the point of building new economies that are rooted in diasporic African and indigenous culture. That work is a form of justice. Because that work is one part social, it requires being aware of all the social ramifications that lead to the situation that we are dealing with. It is also political because one must be firm in the way they envision people interacting within an environment and the way that we feel the city or the state or a federal government should be engaging the people to support livelihood. In that way it was vitally important. The further that we go and the deeper that we go in collaborations the more… there is this particular identity of the designer, and the design identity is one that for me there is value in being able to access that identity.

It is a value for others to be nurtured in the identity of designer because design, to me, it just describes an intentional process to develop a particular thing regardless to what our creative or professional skill sets or orientation is. Each one of us as a collaborative member of a larger project, is co-designing. We are all coming to the table to codesign this one thing. To intentionally build something, to develop something for this self-initiated function.

So the look of things is political: the way things looks matters.

The way things look absolutely matters.

Because this work doesn’t look like social practice to me. It looks like something else.

Yeah, it’s funny because the work that we do is work that happens on the ground, amongst people. Yet the people and places where we are discussing the work, tend to be institutional spaces. Even the concept of social practice, it is not a hood concept, it’s not a grass roots concept. It is an interesting thing to navigate, to navigate all of these different social nuances.

Architects and designer often like to think about the speed of things. Architecture is famously slow. It takes years to build something; it takes months to complete so much as a scenography.

Fashion is seasonal, it’s pretty fast. Music and poetry are the most revolutionary, because the sonoric message can be disseminated with sonic speed to the broadest possible audience with the greatest impact.

Do you consider yourself a poet, an emcee, a cultural curator? Help us out.

Boom. I consider myself a music producer and performing artist. Over achingly, Bryce considers himself a culture creator and that’s it. Thats the bottom line.

But your name...

Bryce Detroit You’re pretty devoted to the city.

Absolutely, I am a son of the city. For me, consistent with the work we do through the Detroit Afrikan Music Institution and the ONE Mile project, it is vitally important to broadcast new narratives that work to counter the negative mainstream narratives that have proliferated these past decades. Bryce Detroit is broadcasting an identity narrative: this is what it looks like to be 100% informed and influenced by Detroit.

Can this work? Can this work bust through the algorithmic social bubble ?

We will say yes, because it is.

Percussionist Efe Bes performing September 2016

Bryce Detroit performing at the launch of the Detroit Afrikan Funkestra, September 2016

beatjazz cyborg Onyx Ashanti

bassist Emily Rogers

CONVERSATION WITH JEAN LOUIS FARGES

SNAP TO IT CUES:

PHOTOGRAPHY:

Sam Okolita Jean Louis Farges

Jean Louis Farges photographed by Jacob Lewkow

Before moving to the US you occasionally practiced photography in Paris?

I did. I was inspired and influenced to take up photography by my friend, the extraordinary photographer Patrick Renaud. We would experiment together in unlikely urban spaces.

Working in Detroit, you arguably landed in one of the most imaged cities on earth - were you inspired to take snaps?

To be honest, I moved to Michigan in 2008 at the height of the city’s economic calamity, which was accompanied by a rise in ‘ruin porn’ representations of a city ravaged by some unidentified bu ominous external catastrophe. The images were everywhere: museums, bookstores, libraries. There was even a special Detroit ruin section on the top floor of the Bonne Marche in Paris. And given the incredible dissonance between the realities of human experience in Detroit and those images of a vacated, abandoned city, I was uncertain what the external photographic lens might add to the conversation, let alone what design could do. So for the first two years living in Detroit, I didn’t take a single photo of the city. I had nothing new to add. Another burned out home? Another urban prairie?

It wasn’t until I started working in a very embedded way with other Detroit artists and residents that I could permit myself an imagistic interpretation of the scenario.

These are your first snaps of the North End taken in 2014? What have you learned since?

Inegalitarian urban strategies often start by rendering marginal or minority groups invisible or frighteningly exotic. In Detroit, the catch is, the marginalized group is flatly in the majority: 83% African American. Nonetheless, there is an incredible and prolonged city-wide effort in place, by design or sometimes negligence, to erase the histories associated with place. The graffiti task force, for example, rolls through neighborhoods painting facades and occasionally historic signs a dreary beige, just up to the datum of the paint roller stick. As a photographer, the documentation of the existing condition is very important. As a designer, understanding that we are contributing to the proliferation of powerful images, I tactically project the visual outcomes so that they conform with the conceptual, spiritual and political aspiration of our collaborators.

DETROIT IS IS THE FUTURE DETROIT THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE IS FUTURE DETROIT THE FUTURE DETROIT ISISTHE FUTURE DETROIT THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE FUTURE DETROIT IS THE FUTURE INGRID LAFLEUR is a sensualist, a political aesthete and a critically-nuanced Afrofuturist. As a cultural producer, arts advocate, and founder of AFROTOPIA, her creative work revolves around ideas of historical trauma, mythmaking, transcendence and the role of spirit science and technology within Black American socio-political movements. All perfect ingredients for a Detroit mayoral candidacy. Sharanya Pai sat down with Ingrid on the eve of her official public announcement to talk about beauty, pleasure and, of course, strategy.

INTERVIEW WITH INGRID LAFLEUR

So you’re running for mayor?

Yes I am running for Mayor of Detroit.

What made you want to do something so incredibly challenging?

It is incredibly challenging. I think it comes from a couple of different angles. One of them growing up in Detroit: born and raised, proud Detroit. I grew up under the era of Coleman Young. I have these memories of feeling safe and protected by my mayor at that time, and then hearing stories about him as an adult. He never took peoples’ homes, he would never shut off water, he stood on the freeway with a gun in his hand when the KKK threatened to come into Detroit. And these are the things put an impression upon me. Now i just don’t see how city governance, since him, really protects its current citizens. Currently, it’s all about business and pulling from outside resources. But there’s this truism that Detroiters build Detroit. We have the capacity to actually do the work ourselves, but we are either not trained, not educated correctly to have the skills to be able to do it. Also mental health is such a big priority. When I was growing up it felt very joyful for me. Granted I was sheltered and lived in a very particular class cultural space. But when I speak to people, from all types of backgrounds about that era 10 years after the 66 rebellion - in this time period there was money flowing, and Detroit had the largest black middle class. I have an understanding of the city that is very intimate, loving, and I have the belief and knowledge that we are

innovators, and we know how to build and revitalize our own city. Because I’ve seen it first hand and understand how that can function. There was a quick peak and decline. I am glad that i got that glimpse, that really short golden era.

I don’t think our current administration has that understanding, and it’s reflected in the way they are carrying out and creating policies and in how they’re interacting with their citizens. At that time period, it just felt happier and healthier.

And now there is a real depression. Mental health services are relegated to those with severe conditions. But there are a lot of us who live daily lives, and we are functioning with this depression. We have seen out city decline, we have seen our city taken away from us. We are told we are incapable. Our education was being dismantled for the past 10 years. A lot of that power that I was used to growing up, that’s diminished. How do we within a radical realm attend to the mental health of Detroit? Because that is true revitalization. If we can switch the consciousness, then we shift the relationship to the city and to each other. And then we begin to take care of each other and really care about our city. Care about the litter. Really be proactive about demoing houses that are falling apart, because they are very dangerous spaces for especially for kids walking home from school.

Advocating for artists to do work for the community, in a way that functions and is sustainable for that particular community.

Are you suggesting that we can shift consciousness through art, design and spirituality?

We can shift consciousness definitely through art, culture, and design. The ways of doing that is making sure we know the issues and challenges. A clear understanding of the challenges we face,

the history of it, how we got to the place we are in. Having an understanding of all the options, all of the possibilities that can to help resolve it. That’s when the innovation comes to play. However, we cannot be innovative if we are not exercising our imagination. Our imagination is not being exercised because either our city government is not investing in arts and culture or not invested in schools. That muscle is very weak. Also within the city government they don’t have the vision or the foresight.

Would identify as an artist and curator who is running for government?

Yes, I identify as a curator first, and the reason I focus on being a curator is because curators observe the landscape, investigate, research, and then we look at the different people who are working within a given realm. We have a particular vision that comes from research. We are hoping to work with different artists or people to help bring that vision into fruition. And the process always involves co-creation: it is never simply my vision and you fit into this slot.

No. Not at all. It’s more along the line of: I have this vision, what do you think? Let’s talk about it. Let’s co-create.

But you’re not just any curator. You’re an Afrotopian curator and an Afrofuturist curator. What does that mean?

I am a curator with expertise in Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is an arts movement, a philosophy, a way of being, that looks at, discusses, engages the black experience through the lens of speculative modalities. That includes science fiction, magic realism, horror, fantasy, and it has all kinds of different daughters, as they say, like scene funk, or Afro- surrealism. Afrofuturism, more than anything, hopes to bring like minded people together. We can google, and find images, and papers, and conferences and concerts -- all these different things that appeal to our own aesthetic. Politically we tend to be in the same vein: progressive. We are human centered. We believe in empowering the youth, the marginalized.

And the aesthetic is sexy.

The aesthetic is always, always, always sexy. I think this is really important because one thing that Afrofuturism really does is expand the notion of Blackness, how it is defined and performed. You can no longer kind of grab onto it. And for that reason the aesthetic does the same thing. It goes here, there, and everywhere.

It goes into an ancient realm, present, dimensions. It is really fun and it is a space you can escape into. It gives you permission to imagine.

So Detroit is the largest African American city in the G8, when it comes to the proportion of the population. Is it the ideal site for Afrofuturist experience?

I think it is. I as a curator I had always thought that I needed to bring Afrofuturist material to Detroit. Upon research and understanding actually how citizens are functioning within Detroit, it is already Afrofuturist. It is just nuanced in a lot of ways. Or not. For instance, we gave the key to the city to Sun Ra, a man who says he is from Saturn, quite seriously. Right? To me that says that whoever, be it the city government, the cultural affairs department, be it the city itself, we were already in this kind of mindset, this very expanded, open, experimental space. But this is our legacy, we are experimental; we have always been experimental in all types of realms, not just in the culture, technology as well. It is a given that if you really want to have an understanding of Afrofuturism, Detroit is a good place to come to.

Do you see the movement growing in the next 10 years?

We are seeing a bigger growth of people from different backgrounds. Afrofuturism it is seen as liberation movement for black bodies. I feel like that if a black body is liberated then everybody is liberated. Because of our racial tensions, because of the history in US America, I think that the black body has come to represents shame.

There is a lot of shame there. We force people to remember a time in our history when we were not our best.

It was just a minute ago that it technically ended, although we are still seeing it played out. This gets into my work about traumas that are residing in the body. So one thing that needs to happen for Detroit to progress, is that all trauma needs to be healed. Not only the black body but everyones’ body. The only way a black body can heal is if everyone is healed. The only way a Latino body can heal is if everybody is healed. It is just the way

it works. We are interconnected. We project our traumas on to each other. We project our fears onto each other and this is what is causing a lot of segregation. That is going to suffocate us if we stay this segregate. In order for true revitalization to happen, we have to move past our trauma and be more open to a new way of interacting and being. Which might mean that we might not be a majority black city in 10 years, but what I am hoping for is that we will be global.

But I can’t ask the world to come into a city that is dysfunctional. It is dysfunctional or it had been within the city government for so long. It had been within the school board. It had been in so many different spaces but also within our minds and our bodies. And this isn’t just black people, this is everybody. How white people are entering with all that fear, the way they interact with me makes me feel like I don’t even belong. In my own city that I live in. I think Detroit’s landscape is just a reflection of the traumas. It goes hand in hand. We have to deal with the place and I think that we focus a lot on place through the lens of development and businesses coming in. We also have to think about our body. How healthy is the body? How much fresh food are we eating? Are we feeding our brains? Are we giving each other energy? Are we being positive? The better that we feel the better we are going to interact and engage with each other. And that makes for a really fun and inviting place for other people to come to. I don’t want people to come feeling like they have to rescue anyone. That’s work. Who wants to do that? And plus we don’t need rescue. We can deal with it our own. We have all the resources available to us. We are probably not activating them.

We have the resources available to make sure that Detroit comes back into its full fruition as a leader in innovation just as we were before. In all sectors.

In parallel to all of your curatorial work, Afrotopia, running for mayor, political engagement, your own practice, you’ve also been instrumental in launching the nomadic Detroit Culture council? What the hell is that?

What the hell is the Detroit Culture Council? That was a joke!

What is it? Why does Detroit need one?

Since I first got moved back home 6 years ago, I have been advocating for one. Detroit does not have a Cultural Affairs Department. The Cultural Affairs Department ended under Kwame Kilpatrick’s administration. It was completely shut down and everybody shifted their attention to the Entertainment Department. But that’s not arts and culture, although they do intersect. For me if we are a cosmopolitan, sophisticated, major city we have to have a cultural affair department -- number 1. When you get into the reasons it can get very technical, like zoning issues. People are buying houses and turning them into art spaces, and they’re getting fined because they’re not activated in the way the city government understands. The ignorance level with city government is also a problem. We don’t have a voice to explain cultural and artistic practices and make it clear that we as artists ought to be of the master plan.

So many people are benefiting from culture and art in Detroit...

Yes all the time. We are producing art and culture, but it is not being valued by our city government.

With that we are not taking advantage of the things that we are known, for example, house music. Our music producers are known around the world, but The Detroit Electronic Music Festival for years has had problems gaining support from the city government. If we had a Cultural Affair Department, we would have someone to explain the value of that. To say that we need this, and not only that we need it, but we need to expand upon it. We need to use it to change our narrative as this scary broken down place filled with ruins, to a place that has an amazing music industry, fashion, architecture, design. All of these things are important. Each industry has its needs. I want a stronger art market. The Susan Hilberry gallery just shut down, and it breaks my heart.

This gallery was one of the most established galleries, showed some of the best artists today.

I don’t know the back story, but I do know that it is very difficult to maintain a gallery here in Detroit. How do we inspire collectors to invest in artists here and patronize the galleries. How do we create new collectors? Our collectors are very important they help support the artists. So then our artists don’t feel like they have to leave

after they graduate from the local universities. They need to know that they can make money here.

I honestly show most of my work outside of Detroit. I would love, seeing that ll of my work is inspired by the city, to show within the city.

For people who have never been to Detroit, and who might be accustomed to images of ruination that have proliferated in the past years, can you acquaint them with what might be a Detroit vibe? Is there such a thing as a Detroit vibe? Is there a particular aesthetic?

I like to define Detroit on an intimate level. Our experience in a grocery store line, a post office, or even a gas station, people will literally talk to you like as if we have had been having this conversation, and we have known each other for 20 years. It can be about anything. A good example is at the Detroit Institute of Arts, I’m at coat check and the security guard is sitting and she says, “these shoes, they’re not working. I just bought them a couple days of ago, they’re not comfortable; I don’t really understand the issue”. For some people that throws them off. For me, I love it. I love the intimacy, that is probably the most seductive thing, the people of Detroit. And that is the vibe. It is very casual, open, loving. At super market you find people dancing in the aisles. Because they play really good soul music, because you’re in Detroit .

That for me is that vibe that comes from our southern roots, that comes from the great migration.

If you visit Detroit you might be surprised or touched by the amount of economic hardship, that you can observe throughout the city. At the same time Afrofuturism its decadent: gold, shiny, ethereal, untethered. It has no economic glass ceiling. Is that right for Detroit? Given the complexity of the social and economic condition is it okay to think Afrofuturistically?

Yeah. Detroit especially the Black population, culturally, we are very flossy, very glamorous, we are very luxurious, elegant. We can work on the line in a factory and when we get off we are putting on alligator shoes and furs. We are fresh and clean. We love aesthetics.

We love fashion design. This is our thing.

I know it throws people off for instance when I wear my furs. I wear furs from my family that are passed down. I wear them on purpose because I am in other spaces, “New Detroit” where there are a lot of people who are not familiar with Detroit culture, and they’re probably not used to seeing a black women in fur.

But in my life, that was all I saw. It didn’t matter what social or economic space you’re in. It’s cold. Shit. What else are you supposed to wear? Also we believe in

Can Afrofuturism be deployed to expose these narratives?

The way that I work is through an evolving creative research project, Afrotopia. I use it as vehicle to implement Afrofuturism in different spaces. Right now I’m traditionally doing it by curating books looking good. That narrative of being grimy and hard through a book club, film, and I talk a lot. I also give parties and is a very White perspective. Black perspective is just those are some of the places that I have come the closest to creating being Diana Ross. Smoky Robinson. We have always more of an intersection of all the groups that I’m playing. How do I been flossing. Even in a low income space, girls still bring people together? I get so surprised when people have been have their hair done, their nails are done. We are not here for all this time, and they don’t know each other. I play it out playing with you. We believe in looking good every in my constant conversations about Afrofuturism. I make sure to time we walk out of the door. And thats the narrative let people know that it is a liberation movement for Black people, that needs to be pushed forward. That’s what makes but its for everybody. It is just centered on blackness. And that’s OK Detroit seductive because it’s so complex. Maybe the because we center on whiteness everyday, and we don’t question it. White spaces become neutral spaces, and I landscape doesn’t always reflect don’t understand it either because they’re not safe this, although we have gorgeous spaces for me. homes. The ruins are not a majority of Detroit. The majority of the city is So many corporations are taking advantage actually intact. of the authenticating brand that Detroit represents and using the city as a As a global traveler, you’ve lived scenographic backdrop. How can we come in New York and other places. together to alter the narrative and graphic Have you ever encountered a trend? Is it even a problem? space where people so openly I think within these corporate spaces, that’s always discuss issues of race? Is this a going to happen and it’s hard to control. We just Detroit phenomenon to be so have to create our own thing and work on the articulate and vocal? outside of it. I don’t want to spend any more time on It is intense here. The racial tension these corporations and convince them otherwise. is super high, and geography plays If we do the work, they will follow. My platform is all a role in that. We don’t know about about supporting families, owning the future, and each other because we don’t live Detroiters build Detroit. I think that Shinola already next to each other. The racial tension does that to a certain extent by creating jobs in a is palpable. I feel that in Detroit we way with manufacturing, great thank you. I don’t all know the issues, we use different know about Dan Gilbert. I am just so ready to be terms to gloss over, New Detroit and human centered and focused on the people.

Old Detroit. We don’t sit at the table together and just hash it out as they Is this a performance or are you really running do in South Africa. And I’ve sat at for mayor? those tables and it’s crazy. Maybe I am definitely running for mayor of the city of it’s part of their healing process, and Detroit. I don’t perform that well. maybe we need to do that. We have our panel discussions but people are so PC. and very sweet about it. I do believe in unity, and I can go into my kum bi yah type of moment. But I am very clear that Whites need to deal with their own traumas because it is playing out right now as we speak. And if you don’t know you history, which the Whites have the privilege of not knowing, then you’re just repeating shit and its exhausting. But how can I expect people to move beyond and not to be afraid of Black people when for generations you’re told that Black people are dumb or dangerous. So when you move back into the city your don’t smile at me, but you’re staring at me.

Alia Benadbellah is a music historian and human geographer currently pursuing her doctoral studies at Wayne State University where she is a George Lurcy Fellow. She is passionate about Detroit African American culture and cultural production of the African diaspora and has studied Afrofuturism at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. At the University of BordeauxMontagne she is working under the supervision of geographer Yves Raibaud on a thesis exploring Detroit Black techno music and its political implications.

BEHIND THAT DETROIT SOUND

BY ALIA BENADBELLAH

The French explorer Antoine de la MotheCadillac founded the city of Detroit in 1701. It is the largest city of Michigan and the largest Black city in America, as well as the largest poor city in the country. Detroit has a tremendous history of Black culture and musical knowledge.

We will start by discussing three essential elements in the understanding of the city and its unique role in American history. We will then talk about some of the historical musical places of Detroit, and how they represent spaces of artistic creativity and freedom much needed for both musicians and the public. From this tradition, comes a rich and hybrid musical culture that is in the heart of this article. *** Detroit is a very unique city and three elements are necessary to understand that. To start, Detroit is one of the most racially polarized cities in the United States, and this polarization finds its roots in a very long and tempestuous racial history. Although there was already a small African-American population living in Detroit prior to that, an important part of the Black population came to Detroit starting the 1910s, following what historians and sociologists called the Great Migrations. African-American were migrating from the South of the country to the North East and the West primarily, after the end of slavery and to escape the Jim Crow’ laws. As the Black population continues to expand, a deep racial conflict develops in Detroit marked by several rebellions including one in 1943 and one in 1967 – one of the most deadly episode of the Hot Summers happening in the 1960s in the United States. The phenomenon of white flight starts to develop as soon as the early 1940s, expression used to point out the massive departure of White population from the city to the suburbs, mostly as a reaction to the arrival of a large Black population. The situation is exacerbated by the World War II as Detroit, nicknamed the Arsenal of Democracy, manufactures almost all American military equipment and results in another 400,000 Black people migrating from the South between 1941 and 1943, to work in requisitioned factories. The increasing poverty of the Black population can be associated in many ways

with the White suburban community’s increasing wealth, but also with the city’s climate of insurrection it always had. This is where Malcolm X preached for the first time, where important rebellions often referred as “riots” by the majority of the white population, happened from an early stage of the city, and where the president of the NAACP Detroit once said that the city was “the most racially polarized city of the nation”. Today, and according to the last census of 2010, 82.7% of the city population is Black, 10.6% is white.

The situation evolved in the same direction until the bankruptcy of 2013, 2014 being the first year since the 1930s where we can observe an increase of White people coming back to the city. Even though a renaissance is happening today in some parts of the city, the situation still is dramatic for most of the inhabitants of Detroit. 49.1% of Detroit population above 18 are unemployed, 39.3% of the inhabitants is living under the poverty line, a number that jumps to 62% for the children and the young adults under 18.

Second element in the understanding of Detroit is the dazzling and infamous rise and fall of the automobile industry, which gave the city an incredible wealth and amount of capitals, before falling into extreme poverty in a few decades.

As US sociologist Lars Bjorn explains in his book Before Motown, a history of jazz in Detroit, “Detroit is the largest U.S. city dependent upon a single industry.

What is less known about the Motor City is that it also grew faster than any other cities in the first three decades of this century. By 1900 Detroit was a midsize city with a population of 286 000 and no unique industrial features. Twenty years later, it was the Motor City and the fourth largest city in the country.” Henry Ford tested his first cars in the city, and introduced the assembly lines in his factories in 1913, resulting in the multiplication of car factories in the area. From this period on, the American dream becomes inseparable to the desire to get one, two, or more cars per household – and will tore down Detroit’ hopes for an efficient transportation system until very recently. As a direct consequence, the city, which counted 290 000 inhabitants in 1900, sees its population grow up to 1.2 millions inhabitants three decades after. The population peak is reached just after the World War Two with 1.85 millions inhabitants in the city, before dropping sharply. The census of 2010 showed that 688.000 people live in the city of Detroit, the city lost around 1.2 millions inhabitants in roughly sixty years.

The last essential element to understand Detroit, maybe the most important one in our context, is the huge Black musical heritage of the city. It is fascinating to study how urban and musical matters always interacted in the city, especially in the Black community.

As soon as the 1910s, Detroit was home of Black Bottom, a predominantly Black neighborhood filled with bars, clubs and many Black businesses. Black Bottom, and its most lively street, Hastings

St., quickly earned a reputation of a space for Black cultural and artistic creation, where musicians such as John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday played among others. But in the early 1960s, the city, under the guise of urban renewal – that people in the city referred oftenly to as “Negro removal”, decided to tear down the entire neighborhood to allow a new highway to be built. By doing that, the city virtually erased all remnant of this historical African American neighborhood that many were comparing to Harlem, and left a strong memory of a colossal cultural loss amongst the Black inhabitants of Detroit.

The next generation of Detroit artists is already on its way, and Berry Gordy appears as the person who is bringing the musical innovation, first with Tamla Records, then with the infamous Motown Records (contraction of Motor Town, one the nickname of Detroit), founded in 1959. This son of merchant borrows a few hundreds box to his family to start his company which will end up changing the face of the recording industry and expand the commercial audience of Black music to a global scale never reached before. One of Gordy’s greatest achievements is without a doubt to have made Black artists entering White American families’ living room through the TV and the Motown aesthetic, although his methods of success have been questioned with time. The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and so many others started in the little house of West Grand Boulevard that Berry first bought and which is now a museum.

Funk also, has a special place in Detroit. George Clinton, one of the creators of the musical genre, alongside James Brown and Sly Stone, started as a Motown musician. He recorded many of his albums at the legendary United Sound Studios, surrounded by talented musicians. The Phelps Cocktail Lounge was Clinton’s favorite spot to play, try his new sets and develops his P Funk mythology. The singer and multi-instrumentalist Prince had a very special bound with Detroit, as many Black subversive artists. Prince first found the success in Detroit, before anywhere in the world. Ted Joseph, the Detroit promotion manager for Warner Bros. Records at the time, recalls in the Detroit Free Press in 2016: “There was something about Prince’s music that just resonated with Detroit. The people of Detroit gravitated to that music like nobody else did, before other cities jumped on the bandwagon”. And if Detroit jumped before everyone else, it is probably thanks to Electrifying Mojo, one of the musical icons of Detroit. To Joseph, who was delivering early Prince records directly to Mojo, “he was the most dominant force for breaking that music for the entire world. Detroit was first, and Mojo was the guy. Detroit broke everything that was Paisley Park (Prince’s label). It all started in Detroit – whether it was Prince, the Time, whatever he had, I’d go directly to Mojo, he’d put it on the air and the rest was history”. Mojo was a disc jokey who had a legendary radio show at the time, “The Midnight Funk Association”, which aired from 1977 to the early 1980s. His magic was to play everything, from classical to Kraftwerk, from George Clinton to Prince and the B-52’s. Some new waves and experimental electronic European music with some of the funkiest Black music: the perfect musical mix that led a few Black kids of Detroit to create a new musical genre, techno music. Detroit offered an unprecedented space of creative freedom to young Black Americans eager for travel, space, extraterrestrial visions and futuristic sounds. Mojo contributed to shape this space. Let’s not forget Detroit huge hip-hop history from J Dilla to Eminem, to more contemporary artists like Danny Brown. In addition to the abundance of Black music, Detroit has always been prolific in other musical genres, and launched the careers of artists such as Iggy Pop, The Stooges, B-52’s and John Sinclair.

Detroit has undergone many important economic, racial and political changes in its history, and still is today. However, one constant has always remained: the great creativity of the artists and the tremendous musical culture of the people of Detroit. ***

Through its history and the significant Black experience, the city of Detroit has always been an incubator of ideas, particularly in music and Black arts. Detroit is seen as a model of cultural hybridity, a place where new sounds, experimental melodies and emergent collaborations are explored. The music scene has evolved tremendously since the arrival of the first Black population in the United States at the beginning of the past century. Black Bottom quickly became known for its profusion of musical innovation, developed in many bars and clubs in the neighborhood. It’s the era of big band, blues and jazz and as the scene grows more and more, so does the multiplication of spaces of performance and musical experimentation. These spaces are mythical cultural places in the history of the African-American community, and more generally, in the history of the American culture. Mythical because of their popular reach in Detroit and because they housed some of the historical moments of musical creation, making these places brilliant spaces of creation where artists had a free rein to their most crazy artistic thoughts.

That being said, the city has often missed the boat of cultural preservation – as the recent demolition of the Park Avenue Hotel, a 13-story Italian Renaissanceinspired hotel built in 1924, to leave room for the new Little Caesar Arena, future hockey stadium and basketball arena, still proves it. Many historical venues, which housed the creation and evolution of Black culture in Detroit, have suffered the same fate and a handful of these music venues still exist today. We chose to focus on three particularly: the Blue Bird Inn, a famous jazz club of Detroit, the Apex Bar, a place inherently associated to the bluesman John Lee Hooker and the Phelps Coktail Lounge, a former sanctuary for Motown and RnB artists.

Blue Bird stage conservation project by the Detroit Sound Conservancy, image ©DCS

The Blue Bird Inn hosted live music performance occasionally since the 1930s but it was not until 1948, when the club hired the pianist Phil Hill that the space gained in popularity. Hill was charge to hire a music band for the club, which he did by focusing on musicians interested in bebop, a new form of jazz that was emerging at the time in New York City that was rejecting most of the previous jazz codes. The Blue Bird Inn hosted successive music legends with house bands directed for example, by musicians Ernie Farrow (1928-1969) or Yusef Lateef (19202013) and musicians such as Ahmad Jamal or Miles Davis. Through the decades, the club acquired a national reputation, mostly for the freedom of creativity and experimentation that musicians felt while playing there. The club is still at its original address today, 5021 Tireman St. but the space has been ill-treated by the long years of decay since its closing in the early 1970s. The Blue Bird Inn fully contributed to the rise of jam sessions in jazz music, as a democratic and free tradition that allows musicians to create and express themselves as they wish. As Dala Gooley, professor of musicology at Brown University stated, “the venerable tradition of the jam sessions reveals an aura of democratic model of political process. The jam sets an open performance, where everyone can participate […]. Jazz musicians viewed these jam sessions as the antithesis of their work”. Intimates jazz venues, rarely subject to the demand of the emerging music industry, represented for both the musicians and the public, an unprecedented, often intimate space where creation was the key word. As Lars Bjorn explains, “Why has the Blue Bird come to be such a symbol of Detroit’ contribution to modern jazz? Simply put, because the Blue Bird Inn was the hippest modern jazz nightspot during the city’s bebop heyday. What made the Blue Bird unique was the people who played, listened and enjoyed themselves there”.

Bluesman John Lee Hooker (1917-2001) was probably one of those artists who believed the most that jam sessions were the “antithesis of his work”. Concierge or an occasion, mechanic in the assembly line of the car factories, John Lee Hooker migrated to Detroit in 1943 to find better working conditions. He started playing at many bars in the city, including the Apex Bar. The multitude of working class bars and club of the Motor City offered a sensitive audience for blues music and the subjects it deals with: hard working conditions, life’s miseries, and stories of lost love. The name John Lee Hooker quickly became inseparable from the Apex Bar, where the musician

started to play and try his musical compositions. The former Michigan disc jockey David Carson explains in his book Grit, Noise and Revolution, that most of the time, you could find John Lee Hooker on the small stage of the Apex playing his music before everyone joining him at the end of the performance, for a wild sequence of improvisation. The Apex Bar, located on 7649 Oakland Avenue, and managed by Yolanda Green and her family, remains in good conditions to this day and waits to see its programming reactivate. At the end of the summer 2016, ONE Mile hosted the “Apex of Funk” party in the venue, specially reopened for the night. The Apex welcomed live musicians again for this occasion, in an atmosphere close to the original.

The Phelps Cocktail Lounge corresponds to a major change in the history of music in Detroit, encapsulating the transition from the era of jazz and blues, to the rise of Motown. It is in this place that George Clinton performed on numerous occasions and operated a number of changes that will later lead to the mythological P Funk scenography. The Phelps Lounge hosted many RnB and soul artists, including the Temptations, Betty Lavette and Etta James to name a few. Due to the proximity, many of Motown’ emerging stars would come to the Phelps to try their music in an intimate space and test the public’s reaction. As Jay Butler, former radio host on WDET radio, recalls, “All of these businesses were busy, Phelps Lounge… there were lines up and down the block. Folks waiting, trying to get in. Back in the 1960s and 1970s you had all the majors RnB and blues acts coming to this place. You saw James Brown, Booby Bland, Tyron Davis, Harold Melvin and the Blues Notes, and a lots of other name too.” Like the Apex Bar, the Phelps is located on Oakland Avenue in the North End neighborhood of Detroit, renowned for its creativity and cultural boiling until the 1940s. It is also from the North End that many Motown stars, such as Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, the Four Tops and Aretha Franklin, come from. George Clinton and his band, The Parliaments, did a series of ten gigs during 1968, ten gigs during which the band would bring a certain musical and creative evolution, as the soul singer Betty Lavette recalls: “They put on their suits and George Clinton said ‘I’m gonna take it all the way’. He had a process with waves and he put his head under the water, so it would come out. And he put on this diaper with this big pin, and when they came out on stage everybody screamed - they thought it was a joke. But then the next night, he wanted to be more bizarre; he wanted the next one to wear sunglasses. Every night it got more and more bizarre. By the time it was over, they were what you see now, or pretty much what you see now.” The bar close its doors in the 1970s, and reopened briefly in the early 1980s. A BB King concert was held there in 1981, probably the last performance of this mythical place that has not reopened since.

***

Detroit is a city with a singular history, which you can understand better by studying music. The significant presence of the African American population makes this city the largest Black city in the US, with a rich culture that influences the music and brings all components of the Detroit vibe, so unique to the city. None of the legendary music places mentioned previoulsy have been subject of preservation campaigns and institutional efforts to safeguard them, althought they are symbols of the tremendous cultural heritage of Detroit. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that these often small and intimate places were spaces of Black musical experimentation and cultural freedom meaningful for Detroit but also for America’s music history.

The city of Detroit is best known around the world for Michael Jackson, Motown Records and Stevie Wonder than it is for its automobile brands. Yet, the music industry is still struggling today to show the institutions and politics the immense culture of Detroit as well as the very strong attraction that the city has on artists and musicians from all over the world. With this project at the Saint-Etienne Design Biennale, we hope to help make things move so that Detroit will benefit from the cultural preservation efforts.

The Meaning of Stage Sets in Detroit’s Black Music Scene What follows are a few thoughts on the formal representations of the three stages of the Blue Bird Inn, the Apex Bar and the Phelps Cocktail Lounge, and the interpretation of them. A last part is dedicated to the scene introduced by Akoaki at the Saint-Etienne Design Biennale.

Blue Bird Inn The club opens in the 1940s at 5021 Tireman St. in the Tireman neighborhood in the North West of Detroit.

Like most Black musical places in Detroit, the Blue Bird Inn is rather small in size, which implies a close proximity to the other musicians, which has an impact on the musical process, and on the public. Both contribute to the feeling of creative democratization and self-expression discussed earlier. The Blue Bird is described by most of the musicians and listeners who frequented the place as a bebop incubator, a place with great musical freedom that allowed the creation of many hybrids and musical experiments.

The stage, like those of other musical venues at the time, is to be understood not only as a physical scene on which the musicians stand to play, but also as a set, a complete environment with a background panel for a more global staging. The Blue Bird Inn has a relatively high block stage, higher than most stages at comparable venue, and round. It is decorated with a wood panel of antique rose in the middle of which, is painted a large reversed blue and white triangle.

On International Jazz Day 2016, Detroit Sound Conservancy salvaged the stage from the building where the roof had begun to collapse. With financial support from DC3 and curation by Public Design Trust, Detroit Sound Conservancy rebuilt the stage to debut at the Saint-Étienne Design Biennale. It will return to Detroit later this year for further programming by DSC. The Phelps Cocktail Lounge While the Phelps was home to many Motown artists and musicians, the stage borrows from the classical motifs of Motown glamorous aesthetic universe. The club opened in the early 1960s at 9000 Oakland Avenue in the North End neighborhood of Detroit, one time the continuation of Hasting Streets and Black Bottom. Inside this rather small space, the scene did not occupy the center of the room, as it is the case in the Blue Bird Inn, which has a more traditional spatial organization. The scene in the Phelps Lounge was located off center, next to a lounge area, left from the entry. There was a platform on which the musicians were playing, in front of a flared panel as the background. The scene is unfortunately in too bad condition to be described in better precision, although you can still see the color tones blue, beige and antique pink. The interior is small, and with a capacity of 450, the place was allowing the Motown musicians, as well as the other artists who performed there, to maintain a close proximity with their audience. The Phelps Lounge, once designated as an “obligatory stop for soul artists” by Billboard Magazine in 1978, is now falling into decay. Since 2007, bricks on the facade have started to detach, and the space goes through significant damages due to water and mold. The bar itself is in good condition, though some of the metal pieces are missing.

Apex Bar The Apex is the smallest of these musical venues but probably the one with the most special vibe. The stage is small and simple but the background consists of mirrors, giving the interiors a disco feeling like no other. The venue is located on 7649 Oakland Avenue, and embodied perfectly the unique vibe that exists in the North End neighborhood. As mentioned previously, the venue is closely related to John Lee Hooker (1912-2001) who played there countless time, for the great pleasure of many inhabitants of the city. The bluesman and famous harmonica player Little Sony, born in 1932, also made the Apex one of his regular spot to play. Over the years, the bar also gained the reputation of being the “cleanest” bar in Detroit, run by meticulous owner Marvelous Persell.

The Apex remains in good condition today, with an interior that didn’t change since its hey day – an exception amongst the music venues in Detroit which deteriorate year after year. Last but not least, space is situated next to One Mile, regular set of The Mothership, one of Akoki design creation and open reference to the Mothership in the P Funk mythology, but also vehicle of social and cultural conversations in the heart of the North End neighborhood.

Phelps Lounge

Apex Bar

Blue Bird Inn

Akoaki Scene The set presented at the Saint-Etienne Design Biennale by Akoaki is a synthesis of Detroit’ African American musical scenographies and a tribute to these spaces of Black creation and musical experimentation in the city of Detroit.

The colors recall those of the Phelps Louge and the Blues Bird Inn, the shapes as well. Akoaki draws from shapes’ codes of the 1940s Black musical tradition. It is during this same period that the jazz artist Sun Ra, considered as the father of Afrofuturism, started making music. It was also during this period, with the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, that a certain literature emerged, linking the African American community to the glorious past of the prestigious Egyptian civilization. Sun Ra began to develop a style – musical but also fashion and artistic – around these Egyptians symbols, including the pyramids, the geometrical forms and the bright colors. The pyramidal form, which symbolizes stability, and became regularly associated with African American musical sets design.

The scenes introduced previously are a good illustration of this.

Although these are some limited spaces, each of them offered a real scenography – with a platform and a set, which helped creating unique spaces where proximity was a keyword, while never forgetting the scenic aspect. The sets were a mode of communication and transmission, which subtly differentiates the venues and created a cultural exchange without overshadowing the performers.

All these elements are present in the scene designed by Akoaki, which was inaugurated at the Detroit Afrikan Funkestra, a live performance presented by ONE Mile and The Detroit Afrikan Music Institution, which took place at the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm during the Design Festival Week 2016 in Detroit. The event, in the words of the organizers, aimed to bring together “Afrofuturists innovators and Funk personalities for a live performance in a mobile and interstellar environment”. During this performance, the set was invested by the same aspirations and vibes than those of the illustrious ancestors of the Blue Bird Inn, the Phelps Cocktail Lounge and the Apex: hybridity, musical experimentation, and active participation of the public around the vast musical heritage of Detroit.

The Akoaki stage set for the Detroit Afrikan Funkestra is made of 400 interlocking plywood pieces which sample colors and shapes from Detroit’s infamous small-scale African American music venues: the Phelp’s Lounge, the Apex Bar, and the Blue Bird Inn. It was first launched at the Oakland Avenue Urban farm in Detroit’s North End during the Detroit Design Festival 2016.

Conversation with Javier Torres

Javier Torres knows creative placemaking. As Director of National Grantmaking at ArtPlace America, he oversees projects led by artists and arts organizations across the US that position art and culture at the center of equitable community development. Prior to his role with the foundation, he worked on the flip side of creative placemaking the director of the Villa Victoria Center for Arts, a program of IBA, a community based multi-disciplinary arts complex that operates as a regional presenter and local programmer for Latino arts. Anya Sirota caught up with Javier by phone on one of his many field visits.

What is placemaking for someone unfamiliar with the concept or living outside the United States?

I think placemaking goes back to William White: he really asked us to think about the way we design the places that people live that takes into consideration their desires first. In understanding a collective community, we want to be able to ensure that when you’re designing that you’re considering both perceptions and realities. Because to us as human beings they are the same thing. Often the way that we train developers or urban planners, the curriculum they’re provided is about efficiency, about quality, and about artistic excellence. And I think that in some of the programs where we consider placemaking, what we are doing is adding to the real human element and understanding that we have different parts of the community. For the work that we do, we further add the word creative to the word placemaking as an invitation for artists and art organizations to be at the center of that planning and developmental process. As an equal partner alongside those who are planning for housing, for transportation, and even the infrastructure we need in our communities.

One of the worries about this approach from a European perspective might be that we instrumentalizing the arts, that art and design are best left liberated from responsibilities and measurable outcomes. How can we address that?

I think in order to begin to responding to that we need to move away from a binary conversation and believe that things shouldn’t be one or the other, black or white.

The organizations that are leading this practice across the United States believe whole heartedly, deeply and passionately, about the intrinsic value of the arts, the significance of producing art for arts sake, and making sure that there are artistic practices, artistic organizations, artistic investments, whose goals are simply to expand their artistic practices. We believe that we can expand the continuum of practice and demonstrate other ways in which art is valuable, necessary, and important to us. That is demonstrated through many educational practices called social practice. In terms of placemaking, we borrow Michael Rohd’s definition, which goes beyond that to what he calls ‘civic practice’. But for us, it is a matter of seeing opportunity in all of those and not requiring art to always be instrumentalized and knowing it is a powerful tool to accomplish every goal

ArtPlace is a short term research project. Who are the partners? And why is the finite time-line?

It is a 10 year project. It launched in 2011 and will close in 2020. The short term nature, that is by design. It is one of the primary reason I accepted this position in this program. I have strong concerns about the philanthropic and nonprofit system and how it institutionalized solving problems. Without giving yourself a deadline, you often have no incentive to actually fix the problem. On the other side of the coin, change doesn’t happen decades at a time, and if there was some really measurable changes that we were aiming for in 10 years and if we couldn’t accomplish it in that time, we would have to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask our selves if we are the right people to do this work, and if not maybe we need to get out of the way and allow someone else to take charge and not allow our egos to say “well we are the right ones”. The third thing is that our hope is that we can reach our goal in 10 years and that what we would be doing is freeing up millions of dollars of resources that could be used to take up the next charge, the next opportunity that would be in the world when we close our doors.

Javier you travel all over the US to directly exchange and work with communities, artists, and projects.

Are there similar vibes or approaches that you’ve observed across the US? And is there anything unique in the Detroit context?

For similarities, I think that the primary similarity is how beautiful people are. I really have traveled to all sorts of very different communities: rural, urban, suburban, “welcoming” communities, “unwelcoming” communities, where I enter into a community where there are confederate flags everywhere. As a gay Puerto Rican man that stimulates a certain emotional response, a habitual response. But everywhere I’ve been, people have been really generous with the knowledge. And in general, everyone wants to be able to have a house, take care of their family, put food on the table. Everybody wants to be able to cherish their history and preserve it for the future. What I realized, and I don’t think this is foreign especially in the academic construct for those who have studied the way government and social systems are designed, we end up blaming each other when we as peers. Those of us living across the country, in an urban or suburban context, whether we are black, white, green or red, we are not actually doing it to each other. The books don’t necessarily have to the power to understand the systems at play, that are generating the circumstances that create the competition, that always requires that some people win and some people lose. What I think is really beautiful and amazing about Detroit in my experience, is that the investments we have been able to make in the last couple of years, has never been about competition. It has been about abundance and recognizing how to design in a way that is about welcoming anyone and everyone, embracing difference, and discord, and allowing those to be respected values. What I really appreciate is that the leadership driving these projects aren’t doing it for themselves. Not for their names, not for their legacy. It is because they understand that it is our role, each of us, to strengthening our places, for our entire community. And for the many things that people may or may not say about Detroit, it is really beautiful to see communities being built from the ground up, and doing that in persistent and successful ways.

How do we measure the impact of these kinds of projects? If they’re both about perception, which seems to be something very powerful but immaterial, and the way that they re-frame community structures on the ground, how do we know what effects placemaking is having?

There are 2 answers to your question. There are some concrete measurable goals that already exists in each of the sectors that are a part of planning and development that can be used. But sometimes these can be inefficient in really getting to the perception and experience. I think that for everyone who studies planning understands the importance of bringing social work back into it. There are ways to measure change in perception and change of experience. We can do those in hindsight. Although those kinds of studies haven’t been done in the past. Many of the projects, through the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtPlace, or the Kresge Foundation, are about what we call indications, which people believe help gage if they are heading

in the right or wrong direction. So that in 3, 5 or 10 years we have harvested enough indication to find trends, and quantify what the real indicators of the transformation that is both human and built, both human and natural environment. And understanding the long term shift that we look for from public outcomes alongside the important shift that we need to see in reducing trauma and being able address any of the other social issues that are faced. I think that there are clear ways. An example that we use is a project that was funded in 2012 in Boston: alongside measuring using a transportation process, alongside measuring increased ridership, we were asking how connected people were to their neighbors. We were asking everybody how much power they felt they had to effect change in their community. We were able to demonstrate over a 3 year period that through the work that we were doing we were contributing to a shift in the social narrative in the neighborhoods where we were working. That connected people to each other and increased their belief that they could work together to create more change.

The theme of the St. Etienne Biennale this year is shifting paradigms in work. I am wondering how the system of arts funding contribute to shifting paradigms in work, in communities, as well as in arts practices. Our understanding, on the ground in Detroit, is that this kind of funding mechanism assist people in building a broad range of parallel institutions.

Not quite a gig economy. But more of a safety network for artists to operate in, that are virtually non-hierarchical. So we have been amazed by how we have been able to build partnership and work horizontally in the field. Do you think that foundations are intentionally contributing to this shift?

So I think that the system has always aimed to impact the way organizations, and people, and sectors work on the ground. I would say that as a board member of the association of the people that do my work, there has been as very persistent and intentional shift in the way in which many of us are viewing our funding because we both believe that we need to be held accountable to the increasing equity of our institutions and for recognizing that the value of the dollar that we are stewarding is not graded in the work that is happening on the ground. I think that in places like Detroit - and what you’re seeing in Detroit isn’t happening everywhere but where you have concentration of very thoughtful, very passionate, committed for the long-haul public institutions, who all share similar values and care for

the people and the place, people are creating space and really allowing for the people on the ground to determine what’s best to do with the dollars that are being distributed, as opposed to being top heavy and prescriptive and believing that from our ivory tower we know what’s best. It has to do with horizontal versus vertical organizations. It also has to do with how we judge quality across every kind of artistic aesthetic and recognizing high quality aesthetics change in every community and culture: those are impacted by history, geography, race ethnicity, economic status, and just personal preference. And I think that the shift in understanding that money is power and is never the thing that can solve anything is why many of us are shifting the way we are investing our dollars to support what you all need and want on the ground.

I would say that more credit is due to all of you for having the courage and the knowhow to deign those systems in a horizontal way, and recognizing that the vertical structures that we’ve created haven’t lasted.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DOUG COOMBE WORDS BY GINA REICHERT

The first quarterly convening of the Detroit Culture Council was held at the ONE Mile Garage in the North End. For the occasion, Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope towed their iconic Bobcat from Power House Production to the ONE Mile project. The arch created as asymbolic marker for the event, is composed of a series of interlocking ornamental reliefs that combine a number of Detroit’s exemplary and vernacular archictural elements with contemporary Detroit works of art and Afrofuturistic elements. The nomadic arch clips onto any existing facade to lend pomp, gilding, and institutional prowess to the organization and its strategy of pop-action.

GINA REICHERT IS AN ARCHITECT, ARTISTS, AND URBAN ACTIVIST. IN COLLABORATION WITH HER PARTNER MITCH COPE, SHE LAUNCHED POWER HOUSE PRODUCTIONS, AN ARTIST-RUN, NEIGHBORHOOD BASED, NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION THAT STRATEGICALLY ESTABLISHED A NETWORK OF PROJECT HOUSES THROUGHOUT THE DETROIT NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE THEY LIVE AND WORK. IN ADDITION TO HER ARCHITECTURAL, URBAN, AND ART CENTERED PRACTICES, REICHERT RECENTLY HELPED FOUND THE NOMADIC DETROIT CULTURE COUNCIL, A SELF-INITIATED COLLABORATIVE EFFORT TO REVIVE DETROIT’S ART COUNCIL. WITHOUT MINCING WORDS, SHE TELLS US WHY. Detroit is big and broad and beautiful. It has been for ages and no one time or place can define this City. It is a sprawling geography of many people and generations, a multiplicity of voices, eras, land and space. Our culture runs deep and is difficult to define, but culture is clearly the vital, underlying force that makes Detroit what it is.

Detroit is not a consumer-based culture. This is not because of our poverty or unemployment rates, which are truly high, but because we value something much deeper than market numbers. I’m not talking about the arts as a marketplace, there’s is not much of an arts market to speak of within the city limits. And I am not speaking of the arts as a luxury or an expression of wealth and privilege. We do things. We make things. But this is not about creating objects of commodity. This is about art & culture as a fundamental component of being.

Our neighborhoods do not follow real estate market logic in part because, after decades of systematic disinvestment, who would? Just because there is nothing here to make money from does not mean there is nothing here. We are not a blank slate waiting for anyone to fix or solve or save. We are not the tools of your development project or your financial agenda. We are not your next Brooklyn, and to say so erases the identity of this place, our history and culture. It is mere market speculation, and we will not let your dollars take our identity. We are not bottom line driven, although we do mean business.

Detroit Culture Council is not aimless but it does cover vast territory, and so we are nomadic. This initiative is about collecting the range of work that defines our city and giving it the respect it deserves, creating the cultural infrastructure to support the people and place.

DETROIT CULTURE COUNCIL: A MANIFESTO IN DEVELOPMENT – Detroit Culture Council is an independent organization and movement; – Culture is an asset that belongs to all residents of the city; – Culture is a major economic driver for the city; – Artists, architects and cultural advocates will not be tools for gentrification, displacement, or short-term private interests.

GOALS Detroit Culture Council will have a major voice in shaping the future vision of the city; Detroit Cultural Council will create an alliance network of interested professionals to provide tools and support for those who work in this field; Detroit Cultural Council will publicly present cultural issues on a quarterly basis; Detroit Cultural Council will publish a review; Detroit Cultural Council will promote and broadcast nationally and internationally the culture of the city.

Cornelius Harris of Underground Resistance speaking at the first convening of the nomadic Detroit Culture Council; facing page Gina Reichert.

CONVERSATION WITH ANYA SIROTA

POLITICS OF AESTHETICS INTERVIEWER: PHOTOGRAPHY:

Marco Petroni Jacob Lewkow

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED FOR DOMUS MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 09, 2017

What is your approach to the public space and how would you define it in O.N.E. Mile’s concept?

Our work on the O.N.E. Mile project was prompted by a stipulation: that the identity of a place can be mined, projected, performed, constructed, rendered visible, even mythologized, and that design could participate in getting the symbols and vibes just right for maximum social inclusion and mixity. By correlation, we imagine the production of public space as a calibrated scenario for animated and sometimes unlikely encounter.

Combining the attributes of a given context, in this case Detroit’s epic North End, with a set of purposefully rendered Afrofuturistic artifacts, and locally rooted cultural activity, we have been working to instigate and renew collective experience in a city where there is a plethora of space – and very little of it is public. Public space, in this situation, is not a neutral amenity, but a site for expression, contestation, and valorization.

You operate like a translator of local attitudes that uses design as a significant medium to investigate cultural knowledges through public installation, music and items. Do you agree with this point of view? And Could you clarify what kind of process did you activate in North End neighborhood in Detroit?

A translator is a very appropriate term. The research phase for this work is considerable, intensive, and ongoing. In fact, it takes years. It starts by building many relationships with a broad network of cultural producers and thinkers, some very grounded in the material realities of place, others entirely untethered. Once we establish a deep level of trust and good faith, we work collaboratively and horizontally on establishing a set of collective ambitions, even projective values, for the neighborhood. To be clear, the goal is not total consensus or harmony; rather, it’s the assembly and provocation of a pluralistic critical mass. With this kind of operating framework in place, people can plug in; projects shift, morph or grow. The key process in the work is establishing a means of communication between a very diverse number of actors who are not always in consensus, but who ultimately share a set of political values.

Do you think that your design approach is connected with real needs of the local community? How do you identify those needs?

There are some very serious needs in the North End and in many communities throughout Detroit: crumbling infrastructure, a pummeled public education system, vulnerable access to water and energy, problems with health care, lack of economic opportunity, and on and on… These basic unanswered needs, made visible in neighborhood disinvestment, are in many ways the consequences of targeted social inequities that have endured in Detroit for a significant span. Unfortunately, design cannot single handedly answer those very pressing needs. What design can do is create a foxy setting for individuals to express views, experiences, aspirations, and struggles so that we can shift perception and uncover a multitude of otherwise invisible narratives.

I would like to know how you are working on the next participation in Saint Etienne Biennial with the OUT SITE project?

Detroit has garnered more than its fair share of public attention in the last years. Serving as a scenographic backdrop for countless exhibitions, workshops, and panel conversations, design experts have often positioned the city as an ideal tabula rasa for a bevy of speculative experiments.

Faced with the curatorial task of framing this urban context in a new and frankly non-colonial way, my partner Jean Louis Farges and I came up with a few rules. One, we would demonstrate design ideas one to one; that is, no models, drawings or prototypes, just direct translations. Two, we would first deploy all of the interventions in Detroit, and then send the projects to the Biennale “used”. In other words, we would privilege their operation in the field and export them along with documentation of how they worked. And three, we would avoid scale-figures, or representations of Detroiters as instrumental or engaged users. Instead, we would treat the Biennale as an alibi to fund-raise and bring as many partners, performers, artists, farmers and urban advocates as we could muster. The result is a carte blanche exhibition that will occupy the Biennale’s central courtyard with three full-scale installations, experimental music performances, and a series of cultural programs exposing a breadth of views and capacities imported from Detroit. And in the process, we hope to make a commentary on ways that design can work outside of normative relations to capital.

You define design like a catalyst for change. To us, your practice seems like a social and economic platform for the local community. Would you agree with that?

It’s a truism that change has emerged as the central rallying cry and coping mechanism du jour. If change points to the instance of something becoming different, it in no way guarantees change for the better or change for the common good. We can see, for instance, how Barak Obama’s call for change was so easily co-opted by the ensuing administration in the United States. For us, too, change is a code word and not an end goal. It hints at a willingness to absorb and re-imagine standard models of urban regeneration so that people who are often excluded from the process can locate a platform for expression if not reconciliation.

And we operate as an incubator as well. Any resident, local artists, cultural producer who has promising ideas that they would like to test are welcome to share in the resources.

Your project is ambitious and it opens a space for new practices in the design context.

What is your personal opinion on the design of tomorrow and in what way should it be different from the one of today?

The things we make as designers have deep political affinities, and they invariably side with certain regimes and ideologies. In the near future, we’re bound to see design continue to contribute, intentionally or not, to current trends, reinforcing our vehement social and political divides. In Detroit, you can see this take shape in a face off between aesthetic regimes of nostalgia and futurism. Midtown and downtown Detroit, some might say, in its adoration of industrial glories is dead set on “making America great again”. But what is promising about design is its capacity through aesthetics and the fabrication of desire to break the algorithmic social bubbles that we tragically find ourselves in. So, I would hope to see design use its disciplinary prowess to take full part in public discourse and political affirmation.

Could you please tell us who gains from your interventions and how? I mean, did the citizens become richer? Did the neighborhood become more attractive for outsiders? Were those your objectives?

Design in slumped economic environments is often referred to as ‘the canary in the coal mine’, deployed to test the tractability of a given context and to signify its disposition for redevelopment. So it is no surprise that design can lead to gentrification and involuntary displacement. In the North End of Detroit, it’s difficult to claim that we single handedly upped the hotness factor of the neighborhood. In the collective imaginary it was very hot already. And many other urban improvement projects were also in the mix. But we did contribute to its visibility and intrigue. The fact is, this was one of the goals: making the cultural value of a place discernible by corroborating its diasporic African narratives, music histories, its affectations, and dissents.

We learned the hard way just how quickly that activity attracts outside attention and investment. Since, we’ve folded lawyers, economists, real estate agents, and social scientists into the mix, and we now begin every initiative by designing new collective ownership models that secure land and property for the benefit of local residents.

What did you learn from your projects? Would you move any criticism to yourself?

The art historian Claire Bishop nailed the problem in her 2012 critique of participatory practices in Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. The more efficiently we instrumentalize art and design for social inclusion, the more we minimize our dependence on the state and collective governance for the same support and services. This is particularly unsettling in the current political environment, where all existing social infrastructures appear to be under attack in America.

According to philosopher and community catalyst Frithjof Bergmann, we are less free than we think, surrounded as we are by endless trivial choices.

We will only really be free when we have the option of doing things with our lives that we care deeply about. Is there a connection between your projects and the cultural movement new work new culture?

Frithjof Bergmann is the source of quite a bit of original and influential thinking on new paradigms in work and community building. We tend to agree with his dreary read of financial resurgence, for instance, admitting that the current scenario is not a recession and that the cyclical adjustments of Keynesian economics are most likely a thing of the past. And we certainly collaborate with some techno-utopians who flatly believe that the proliferation of homemade 3d printers will set us free. But our position is far less didactic than the new work new culture movement with its crisp differentiation between creative enterprise, educated consciousness, and community building. We think all of those things are much messier and contingent, and often emerge out of situations that are unplanned and cannot be systemically mitigated. Let’s just say, we’re too romantic to side with Bergmann.

What is the aim for the future and how do you think to improve your practices in Detroit and abroad? Plans for the future?

One of the great things we recently filched from Sun Ra is that linear notions of time are overrated. The way things look, the future is already here. Now we have to deal with it.

LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER LAYOVER

AUTHOR AND ECONOMIST JULIEN DOURGNON LANDS IN DETROIT FOR THE FIRST TIME. WE SIT DOWN TO TALK FIRST IMPRESSIONS, CONCEPTUAL BAGGAGE, AND SWEET DISCOVERY.

You recently visited Detroit and the ONE Mile project? What did you think? Is there anything surprising about the way people are working on issues of urban activation in this context?

Je n’étais jamais venu à Detroit. Et comme tout le monde je suis arrivé avec mes bagages: des représentations de la ville livrées par les media européens avec son abondante iconographie de maisons, établissements publics et églises abandonnées. Et il est vrai que c’est assez fascinant à voir une ville comme au sur-lendemain du passage d’un ouragan.

I had never been to Detroit. And like everyone else, I arrived with my baggage: representations of the city delivered by the European media with its abundant iconography of abandoned houses, crumbling public infrastructure and ruined churches. It’s true that seeing a city in this state of catastrophic coming- undoneness can be fascinating.

Je crois avoir vu une concrétisation pure de la violence du capitalisme contemporain: une machine qui absorbe toute l’énergie humaine et naturelle disponibles et qui passe son temps à tout détruire et à tout reconstruire, par cycle.

I believe I witnessed the material evidence of contemporary capitalism’s violence: a machine that absorbs all available human and natural energy and spends its time destroying everything and rebuilding everything by cycle.

Comme j’ai du mal à supporter ce que on pourrait appeler “l’esthetisation du malheur des autres” sur le style: “ ces maisons fantômes brinquebalantes et sauvagement végétalisées dégagent une poésie incroyable, on devrait en faire un livre !” Je n’est pas trouvé cela beau du tout.

It’s very difficult for me to support what one might call “the aesthetization of the misfortune of others”. The genre of thinking goes something like: “these ghostly and savagely vegetated ghost houses emit an incredible poetry, one should make a book!” I do not find this beautiful at all.

La beauté ce sont les gens qui la portent. Et la, on peut dire que l’on est servi et bien servi si l’on peut dire. Justement, je crois que One Mile Project est avant tout un projet qui cherche à faire parler les gens, à faire émerger une narration puissante, résiliente et contestataire de l’ordre établi. Et les personnes du projet cherchent les moyens de faire du design, de la musique ou toute autre forme créative un

levier d’expression pour les gens, un prétexte pour se rassembler, pour s’exprimer et s’organiser. Je ne connais rien au design, je suis nul mais j’ai ressenti et peut être compris une chose: le design peut être une force active, performative, une étincelle qui allume une action.

Le design est une affaire d’évènement, d’irruption du réel, pas de muséographie ou de conservation.

It’s people who make beauty. And there is an abundance of beauty in the people of Detroit. Which is why I believe the ONE Mile Project is above all an effort to create a space for people to speak, to bring out powerful, resilient narratives that work in resistance to the established order. The people involved in the project are looking for ways to make design, music or any other creative form of expression a means to leverage collective experience; it is a pretext for coming together, for communicating and for organizing. I know very little about design, but I felt and could clearly understand one thing: design can be an active, performative force, a spark that ignites an action. Design is an event; it’s the irruption of reality, not the museumification or conservation of a given condition.

Et ce sont paradoxalement les formes de création les plus pointues, abstraites et donc réputées difficiles qui, si elles sont pensées et placées dans l’action, à l’épicentre d’un évènement, arrivent à sublimer l’idéologie néo-bourgeoise et à infuser un nouveau discours: la richesse et la puissance créative de Detroit c’est sa population historique majoritairement noire.

Paradoxically, these types of conceptual practices, which emphasize events and action, are perhaps the most pointed, abstract and therefore difficult forms of creation. At the epicenter of an event, is the possibility of sublimating neo-bourgeois ideology and infusing activity with new discourse: incorporating the wealth and creative power of Detroit is its historically black population.

Je crois que partout ou il y a de la création il y a de la resistance et de la réinvention de quelque chose pour sortir du “ronron” du monde qui tourne. Je crois moins à l’acte volontaire qui consiste à décider de faire du social ou autre chose avec son Art. C’est pour moi le meilleur moyen de reproduire, malgré soi, l’ordre établi.

Et encore moins si cela est placé sous contrôle des institutions officielles. Pour créer, il faut un mouvement de sortie des institutions (par forcément rompre), il faut assumer une forme de marginalité quelque part pour trouver une radicalité de pensée et d’action. C’est cette liberté difficile à préserver qui est à la source de la réinvention des imaginaires et des nouveaux modèles de vie. Le penseur le plus puissant de l’écologie politique : Ivan Illich était un marginal au sein des institutions universitaires.

I believe that wherever there is creation there is resistance and the reinvention of something to get us out of the “purr” of the rotating world. I believe less in the voluntary act of deciding to make the social or something else with Art. It is for me the best means of reproducing the established order in spite of itself, and even more so if it is placed under the control of official institutions. To create one must be in a movement exterior to institutions (not necessarily breaking from them). One must assume a form of marginality in order to find a form of radical thought and action. It is this freedom that is difficult to preserve, which is at the source of the reinvention of imaginary and new models of life. The most powerful thinker of political ecology, Ivan Illich, was a marginalized figure in academic institutions.

Some might say that creative practices have taken a social turn - instrumentalizing art and design in order to make things better, or at the very least, normal. It seems like Akoaki, the O.N.E. Mile Project, the Detroit Afrikan Music Institution, the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm and others are not trying to return to a former sense of normal - rather they are illustrating the need for new ways of doing things where an equitable upswing might not be immanent. You are trained as an economist. Does this type of practice signal an end to Keynesian economic cycles?

Akoaki, the O.N.E. Mile Project, the Detroit Afrikan Music Institution, the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm assument, je crois, chacun à sa manière, à juste titre, une forme de marginalité au nom d’une idée centrale: transformer radicalement les processus de création et de production ( artistique ou agricole donc économique) loin de l’hypercapitalisme et l’ industrialisme. Au fond ce dont il s’agit c’est de permettre à chacun non de trouver sa place mais de retrouver “son sens” qu’il s’agisse de créer, à petite ou grande échelle de la musique, de cultiver des légumes sans pesticide ou de vendre des confitures produites localement. Mais, pour résister à la colonisation des forces aspirantes du marché mondialisé j’ai toujours pensé qu’une communauté, quelle que soit sa taille, devait remettre la main sur le bien commun économique le plus politique qui soit: la monnaie et donc sur le capital.

Akoaki, the O.N.E. Mile Project, the Detroit Afrikan Music Institution, the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, I think that each one of these efforts in its own right way occupies a space of marginality in the name of a central idea: the exploration of radically transformative creative and productive processes (artistic or agricultural therefore economic) far from hyper-capitalism and industrialism. Basically the central concept of the work allows everyone not to find his or her place, but to find “meaning” whether it is through the creation of music, or the cultivation of vegetables without pesticide, or the sale of locally produced jams. But to resist the colonization of the aspiring forces of the globalized market, I always thought that a community, whatever its size, had to reclaim the most political economic common good: money and therefore capital.

Is the vibe dystopic or optimistic? Even Utopian?

Le sociologue américain Randall Collins dans “Does capitalism have a future” estime que nous sommes non à un moment d’un cycle économique mais au tournant d’un changement de plus grande envergure avec l’épuisement définitif du capitalisme et l’émergence d’un monde finalement encore inconnu. C’est vraiment le bon moment pour être utopique !!

The American sociologist Randall Collins in “Does capitalism have a future” believes that we are not at a time in an economic cycle but at the turn of a far greater change with the definitive exhaustion of capitalism and the emergence of a “ A world still unknown. This is really the right time to be utopian !!

You live between France and Brazil. Any universal lessons we En économie aussi il y des narrations à inventer et à changer. might draw about diminishing access to capital and creative Au Brésil ou en France on nous raconte la même histoire, que la expression? richesse vient des entreprises. Ce n’est pas faux et ce n’est pas vrai non plus. Créer c’est recycler à 90% des connaissances, des savoirs faire accumulés dans la société. L’entreprise privatise invisiblement beaucoup de richesses publiques. C’est pour cette raison qu’ au Brésil comme en France, je suis favorable au revenu universel d’existence. Il est l’heure de traiter la société non comme une charge mais un potentiel créateur.

In economics, too, there are narratives to be invented and changed.

In Brazil or France we are told the same story, that wealth comes from companies. This is not wrong and it is not true either. To create is to recycle 90% of knowledge, know-how accumulated in society. The company invisibly privatizes a lot of public wealth. It is for this reason that in Brazil as in France, I am in favor of the universal income of existence. It is time to treat society not as a burden but as a creative potential.

And your favorite poet?

Buster Keaton

THE THE THE THE THE THE

NORTH NORTH NORTH NORTH NORTH NORTH

END END END END END END

VENERABLE MARSHA MUSIC, DETROIT’S BELOVED CULTURAL AMBASSADOR AND SELF-DESCRIBED ‘DETROITIST’, LIKES TO SAY “I WASN’T LITERALLY BORN IN A RECORD SHOP, BUT I MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN”. DAUGHTER OF THE LATE LEGENDARY PRE-MOTOWN RECORD PRODUCER, JOE VON BATTLE, AND DETROIT BEAUTY, SHIRLEY BATTLE, MARSHA’S UNIQUE UNDERSTANDING OF THE CITY’S ECONOMIC, CULTURAL AND POLITICAL MOVEMENTS IS SECOND TO NONE. MARSHA KNOWS EVERYONE. AND HER APPEARANCES AT ANY EVENT, OFTEN ACCOMPANIED BY HUSBAND AND ARTIST DAVID PHILPOT, SIGNAL THE MOMENTOUSNESS AND CIVILITY OF THE OCCASION. WHEN SHE NOT ENTERTAINING, ATTENDING PUBLIC AFFAIRS, EXPLORING THE CITY’S EVER BURGEONING ARTS SCENES, AND ADVOCATING FOR DETROIT AT SPEAKING APPEARANCES, SHE WRITES POETRY AND PROSE. HERE SHE SHARES THE STORY OF DETROIT’S NORTH END AS SHE INTRODUCES THE NEIGHBORHOOD TO KINDRED SPIRIT JOSYANE FRANC VISITING FROM ST. ETIENNE’S CITE DU DESIGN.

BY MARSHA MUSIC

The Detroit Design Summit, in September 2016, hailed the city’s designation as a UNESCO City of Design – the first in the U.S. It was held at the Jam Handy Building, a huge, brick-walled, former film studio, repurposed for events and art. It sits at the edge of Detroit’s North End, so named because, in the 19th century, it was a northernmost neighborhood; today, it is the city’s center. It was the home of pre-automotive upper classes, later a Jewish enclave, and by the mid-last century, a Black community and music mecca - where John Lee Hooker played the Apex Bar, several Motown artists called home, and George Clinton, et al, channeled the Funk.

At the summit I met a French woman, Josyane, head of an arts institute in St. Etienne, another UNESCO City of Design. I bonded with her instantly - a woman of a certain age, like me; a lover of chic and funky style, like me; a grandmother wearing ethnic beads, like me; we had much in common. At the end of the day, while waiting for the bus to whisk her way, I rushed her to my car to show her a bit of Detroit, my home.

We made the first stop at an Urban Garden run by the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, with rows of earth so even and exact, I joked that the farmer – Tyson Gersh – must be a seriously obsessive perfectionist. We drove up Brush Street and on either side - empty lots, antique Art and Crafts houses, burned buildings, well cared-for homes, ruined blocks, renovated Victorian cottages, a crowded playground named after recently deceased venerated matriarch, Delores Bennett, vacant houses, churches that were once synagogues, outdoor art, stunning mansions, Baptist churches and a massive cathedral, long-timers and newcomers – the dynamic miscellany of the North End. Many visitors are shocked at such unevenness, but Josyane was undisturbed; she was impressed with the evidence of our former splendor, exhilarated to see the affirmations of life today. We drove to Arden Park and Boston; two wide avenues of massive brick and limestone homes; evidence of Detroit’s oldworld magnificence – the Paris of the Midwest. Visitors are often agog – the view is much different than the devastation seen in the media. The narratives that most often accompany these excursions are of the “Golden Age of Detroit” variety; a nostalgia for the early 20th century world of White industrialists, workers and residents.

But I also tell visitors stories of the Black Detroiters who moved into these substantial homes and mansions when Whites fled. So many of us – of what was the largest Black middle class in the country cared for these huge homes and lived in grand elegance for decades; here, and in my hometown, blocks away, Highland Park.

I showed Josyane the North End house that my husband and I recently purchased, a Tudor behemoth in need of great – and costly - repair. Despite this challenge - and though we live in a comfy townhouse downtown - we desire a life of art and visitors in this root neighborhood of Detroit. Josyane and I drove past the welcoming gazebo of the Oakland Avenue urban farm, lush and verdant in autumnal harvest, run by a Black farming couple, the Hebrons. We continued down Oakland Ave. - a long, commercial street virtually decimated by blight – and pass a triumvirate of renovated arts spaces: One Mile, The Garage and The Red Door.

The next night, we headed to an outdoor concert, down the street from the Oakland Avenue Farm. Josyane, my husband and I set out in the car; it was dark, and as we grew close, I opened the windows to let the music guide us. It grew louder, and young people – unafraid of the night city - came into view. We parked at the curb of vacant lots that once held solid, working-class houses with character – many of which remain, intact and mostly occupied.

We step out of the car and walk in the darkness through stubble and weeds. Patches of land are overgrown with trees and greenery, as if homes had never been there. The only illumination is a streetlight, and a lit up vendor’s booth of folks selling homemade garden jam. We can barely see as we walk over the brush and uneven ground; the event folks assist us as we creep along. I am abashed that I am taking an international visitor to such a raw place, but we’ve come too far to stop now.

After a half step down onto what once was an alley, through an archway of brambles and ragged trees, we walk suddenly into a clearing – teeming with people! It was a shock to look out at a phalanx of revelers, in a field with a block of homes across the street. There played Funkestra - an assemblage of musical savants led by cultural griot Bryce Detroit, propelled by African drummer Efe Bes - who has played from the streets to the symphony; urban classical cellist, Cecelia Sharpe, and Onyx - creating electronic music from his own physical energy.

They, and others, are on a phantasmagoric stage designed by Akoaki, a design team founded by a French and American architectural couple embedded in Detroit arts. Since here, they have co-created a reconstituted, intergalactic Mothership, an artscape inspired by the MBAD Bead Museum; and this new stage is a triptych of archways, with spheres, pyramids, symbols; a hieroglyph of Detroit iconography.

As we walked onto the open land, a moonscape in the darkness, we took our seats to watch the jubilance and spectacle. Josyane cried out, in her French sounding English, “Ah! We are in an amazing park!” I realized that she saw this place, not as a huddle of empty lots from houses long gone, not as devastation; but on that night of community, entrepreneurship and art, she saw it through the eyes of the artists – a place of music, hope and magic, on the North End of Detroit.

following page: Marsha Music and David Philpot at the O.N.E. Mile Legacy of Funk concert and Mothership launch.

Photo by Kirk Donaldson

CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTOPHER HOLDER

MAKING IT WORDS: Imani Smith PHOTOGRAPHY: Akoaki You joined Akoaki working on the ONE Mile project last summer - what motivated you to come on board?

The ONE Mile project stimulated my regard for inner hood evolution, engaging simultaneously unwritten social traditions with future architectural histories.

Where were you employed prior to joining the project?

Prior to the ONE Mile project, I chased factory/street hustle jobs for perceived training and wages. While experiencing the glass ceiling factor in retail and the harsh realities of manufacturing jobs, I said ‘yo let me open up a new door’. Almost overnight the workforce demand for construction labor in Detroit ringed, and I enrolled in a work study program “Detroiters Working For Environmental Justice”. It is job training focused on pre-apprenticeship preparation for skilled trades. My sphere of reality shifted toward the individual need for sustainable green living in urban area construction.

You live in Detroit’s North End. Can you describe your neighborhood to someone who never been?

The NorthEnd is just like any other place where the disadvantaged thrive. A home of unfavorable economic and educational circumstances. The streets are tangled with ex- felons,drug dealers/users, ex vets, vacant fields, and young teens trying to escape the forever pulling mental and social despair. The North End is also

an economic goldmine for “outta towners”. For locals it’s becoming a social intergradation wake up call. My North End is from 75 to Woodward & from Webb to the boulevard. The North End is beautiful and violent. More liquor stores than schools. Gas stations are grocery stores. Organic gardens and vacant lots sprinkle throughout the residential ruins. Black squirrels and wild pheasants run across one ways that later turn into core downtown paths.

Detroit summers are the best for underground art studios where people share gardening plans and vegan recipes while sipping local beer. There are whole in the wall clubs where fashion and Cartier frames mark you king. Everyone from business women to homeless men ride bikes during warm months. The winter months are ugly, Trash and dead trees reveal the homeless homes. With pockets of high vibration, the North End is a creative and economic hub. Damn near all hoods touch the North End. While walking through the hood, I visualize how the shit looked during its apex. Everyday the number of the displaced grows along with the rubbish from condemned houses.

You choose to live in Detroit at an economically tumultuous time.

Whats keeps you here?

Detroit is a country and its vicinities are states. Being familiar with the tradition and history of this country ties me here. Detroit birthed soul music, the Nation of Islam, and the idealized dope drug cartels. I have always been a world traveler so searching for a new promised land will always be my motivational force. To be honest, the hope for a better tomorrow keeps me stationed. But for me to escape this mental vibration, economic and intellectual support is key.

What are some of the challenges creative folks face given the economic realities of the city?

Detroit economic situation is a direct result of the lack of creative activities and schools. Simple. With little or no creatives outlets peoples’ mental paradigm are shackled and ignored. Why? Partly because we are the offspring of the auto worker: you don’t work you don’t eat.

What albums are you listening to these days?

Haa!!! I listen to a large array of music. I enjoy music from the 60 - 70‘s. Issac Hayes, Janis Ian, Jim Morrison, and Sade anything I can sample. Old music shares a time when social conscience and activism was related through music. Also, underground hip-hop and trends are my CNN, keeping me up to date.

CULTIVATING AT THE OAKLAND AVENUE URBAN FARM The simple idealism surrounding urban farming, especially among youthful migrants to Detroit, is that it is a magic solution to fix the battered city.

While urban farming provides nourishment in food deserts as well as jobs, and also stewards and populates land that would otherwise be neglected, farms cannot sustain themselves with fruit and vegetable sales alone. Infrastructure and irrigation challenges limit production, implicating the necessity of other solutions for a sustainable business model.

At the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in the North End neighborhood of Detroit, a new collaborative initiative is evolving, bringing together many elements necessary for success. The farm prefers to refer to itself as an “agri-cultural landscape,� and grows not only food, but also community and cultural experience.

BY HILARY EDESESS

Recollections of Oakland Avenue Farming in Detroit isn’t new. “Before the automotive boom at the beginning of the 20th century, it was all farmland,” says Jerry Hebron, founder of the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm who grew up in the North End. In addition, many of the people moving to Detroit in the 1950s, a period in which it became the fourth largest city in the U.S.A., had a tradition of farming, including Jerry’s family who arrived from Tennessee in 1951. “In the South, they went to the store for stuff they couldn’t grow like flower and sugar. When we came north my family continued to farm.”

In the North End, Jerry remembers how neighbors knew each other and everyone grew food they shared. “The ‘new’ cooperative economy existed then,” she says.

The neighborhood’s commercial district was Oakland Avenue. Contrary to drooping brick structures that line the street today, Jerry says it was once animated and provided a social center. Businesses occupied every ground floor while their owners resided above.

Return to the North End Race riots, factory displacements and highway construction systematically caused a slow exodus of 60% of Detroit’s residents over a sixty-year period.

After leaving the North End for several years, Jerry returned with her husband Billy in 2008. “When I was driving through the neighborhood, I thought ‘what happened here? Where did everybody go?’ House after house was vacant.”

Jerry and Billy began attending neighborhood meetings to better understand the residents’ challenges. “People were in need of food, housing and jobs. When you can’t get those things you do, by any means necessary, what you have to stay alive.

Neighbors were afraid to answer the door because they couldn’t trust each other.”

The vacancy on Oakland Avenue meant there was no reason to look around and engage with the space, leaving landscapes unattended and vulnerable to criminal activity.

An Agri-Cultural Landscape From its conception in 2009, the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm’s goal was to create a beautiful space where neighbors could interact with each other and their surroundings. There were ten lots between buildings, which the Hebrons purchased with the help of the local church and community members to start cultivating their agri-cultural landscape.

Collaborations with other organizations formed, and each one brought their expertise to the table.

Anya Sirota and Jean Louis Farges, principals of Akoaki and co-founders of the ONE Mile project, began working many aspects of the design and organizational infrastructure, including a progressive map of the landscape, a counter to traditional forms of master planning. Tiny figures of every member of the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm are visible on the drawing, including the neighborhood stray cat. Other partnerships have been established with Center for Community-Based Enterprise (C2BE) and Enclave Project for Contemporary Arts.

In addition to garden space, the landscape provides a community house, and venues for performances, classes and festivals, like the annual Afro Jam music festival, which inspired the name of the eponymous fruit jam made at the farm.

Back to the Land Despite Jerry’s family history of farming, she says the practice skipped her generation. “Due to the privileges we gained from our parents’ race relations struggle, jobs were flourishing for Blacks as I was growing up, so baby boomers didn’t farm.” To begin cultivating, the Hebrons and the Oakland Farm community took advantage of educational resources as well as material resources provided by organizations like Keep Growing Detroit, The Greening of Detroit and Garden Resource.

They have also been learning through trial and error, and older community members’ experience.

One of their goals is to produce their own compost to sell locally. “In order for us to survive as a society, we all need to be making healthy soil,” says Jerry.

They are also experimenting with different planting techniques such as native garden method and pesticide free companion planting methods, as well as growing plants indigenous to Africa, but uncommon in Michigan, such as West African Hibiscus Bissap. “Our children have to know where we come from, how we got here,” says Jerry.

Farming Meets Innovative Design “The hardest thing for us as designers, is to make the case that design counts”, says Anya of Akoaki. Design plays an important role in rendering the farm sustainable and also unique in ways that catch international attention and support. Anya and Jean Louis have helped in re-imagining how to draw out the landscape’s strengths. Anya points out how trees marking lots where houses used to stand on Goodwin Street, which runs parallel to Oakland, limit the size of planting fields, but can also be design elements representative of urbanity and the neighborhood’s history.

Their current assignment, of which Jean Louis is project manager, is revamping a vacant two-story house they call The Landing, which will provide a learning and event space, accommodations for traveling interns and visitors, and also a kitchen for making Afro Jam fruit conserves, which is currently made at the community house.

A technologically advanced aspect of The Landing is what Anya describes as a “thermal sweater-dress” they plan to put on it. The aim of this insulation layer, design in collaboration with environmental engineer Lars Junghans, is to eliminate the need for heat or air-conditioning year round.

Community Hub, Urban Model The Oakland Avenue Urban Farm’s efforts to restore the land and the neighborhood while investing in a better future, and a model which can serve the city, has shaped a more optimistic and welcoming community as well, in a neighborhood previously ruled by fear. “We are family,” Jerry says, “I love the diversity here and how we all connect to each other. We don’t judge people. What I have learned is because of this space here, we are changing people’s lives, and it’s intentional.”

Market

Detroit Afrikan Funkestra

Bissap Gardens

Nice outfit The Community House

Productive Landscape

Apple Orchard

EXTRA-DISCIPLINARY (ON PURPOSE), AT SCALE

BY CEZANNE CHARLES PHOTOGRAPHY MATT ROWE

I am a designer, artist, technologist, writer, curator, researcher, policymaker, funder, and planner. I do these things as part of my W-2 work at Creative Many Michigan and as part of W-9 work mainly through rootoftwo, the hybrid design studio I formed with John Marshall in 1998. I am curious. I learn both how to do things and I do things most importantly to learn. I have been working in Detroit for almost nine years. I am aware of how short a time that is, in a city where the words “life-long” are both cultural currency and a credential that I will never possess. Still, Detroit is the place that I have worked the longest. It is a place where you must do it yourself, so you might as well do it with and for others. It is the perfect place to be extra-disciplinary, to wear many hats. So, I have. Probably, most likely, so have you.

Detroit, more than any other city I’ve experienced, is a place of mentors and elders. It is no surprise that the practitioners I’ve met and the institutions I’ve been part of or worked with here seem either unable to escape or are renewed by their cultural lineage. It has caused me to reflect on how my path was shaped by two mentors early in my career. One mentor told me that I would have to choose between being a practitioner, curator or an administrator. The second challenged me to figure out how to do, what I do at scale, for more people. I leaned in to both seeing them as challenges but also as inextricably linked. I never questioned why I needed to be all three and I never assumed that simply doing things for more people would be better. Detroit has afforded me the greatest opportunity to run at these challenges in both my W-2 and W-9 work.

Detroit as a place and as a creative community is filled with shapeshifters. I am not alone. The artists, designers and organizations that engage in neighborhood stabilization and transformation via their (un)built work and interventions, make themselves a sanctuary in southwest while also engaging in youth education, put media justice to work for community benefit are all engaging in extra-disciplinary efforts to impede the process of cultural, economic and physical displacement in Detroit.

Cézanne Charles is director of creative industries at Creative Many Michigan and is the co-founder of the hybrid design studio, rootoftwo.

Tweets: @ce_wonk |@rootoftwo | @creativemany.

Interweb: rootoftwo.com | creativemany.org.

Being extra-disciplinary in Detroit or anywhere, also has its cost.

I know many that are extra-disciplinary out of necessity and not choice. Detroit has always required a working-class graft in its artists. The lack of infrastructure, was not allowed to be an obstacle. However, the constant need to be artist, curator and gallery // band, venue, and label // performer, artistic director, and festival organizer - has overtime seen talent leave the city while a particular kind of resilient and entrenched talent remains.

Wearing too many hats can wear thin. It is a privilege then, to be extra-disciplinary (on purpose). It is a place and point that I have been trying to get to, since I began working eighteen years ago, in the creative industries. In Detroit, I at last understood that the practitioner, the curator and the administrator are all interconnected.

Each affords the opportunity to operate at different scales and access different circles of influence, moreover each has allowed me to observe, listen, and learn.

I haven’t worked to become influential, but I have worked to become infrastructural over the last nine years. It remains a consistent feature of my work - a need to set up systems, act as a change agent, to help organizations or people realize their potential, to plot fictive but possible trajectories into near and far future timelines for myself and the ecosystem I inhabit.

This is the work of the administrator - and is only possible due to the intelligence gained from working as and with practitioners; and the contextualizing and critiquing that comes as curator.

The administrator synthesizes, makes interventions, nurtures the ecosystem, and hopefully softens borders and bridges territories.

This is how I do, what I do, for more people - at scale.

I have recently acquired a third mentor with yet another challenge - this time the question is how do you do, what you do, with resilience. This has forced me to prioritize what work is most important and identify what systems for sustaining it need to be put in place as well as who my allies and champions are in the work. I have had to think about energy, effort and will as non-renewable resources for the first time. To understand that just because I can be the administrator, curator and practitioner; doesn’t mean I have the capacity to or should. To adapt to change while retaining what is essential; to comeback more resourceful and strengthened by adverse circumstances is the most apt description I can think of for Detroit - it is also the very definition of resilience. Resilience is now my daily challenge; for myself and for the work I do with and for others.

A ONE MILE CONVERSATION WITH KRISTEN GALLERNEAUX

MOTHERSHIP: MAKING OF AN URBAN MARKER

Can you explain what the Mothership is?

The Mothership is a Parliament-Funkadelic inspired mobile DJ booth, broadcast module, and urban marker designed to transmit cultural activity from Detroit’s epic North End. Channeling Ancient African material culture and Afrofuturist aesthetics, the deployable pod energizes underused sites, creates a sense of place, and helps signal that Detroit’s creative prowess is powerful and uninterrupted. But most simply it’s an object, one that people can identify with. Stationed without programming, it’s a mini-monument. Ajar and pulsating with music, it reveals a DJ and accompanies a broad spectrum of public events, performances, and community gatherings. Add smoke machines and colored lighting, and the Mothership creates the impression of having “just landed”.

Where was it built, and how long did it take to build?

The Mothership was designed for the ONE Mile project by the studio Akoaki in consultation with Bryce Detroit, who invited a broad network of Parliamanent-Funkadelic musicians to offer feedback on the design. This particular creative alliance between design and music is really unusual, and proved to be an amazing experience for everyone involved.

It was modeled virtually and physically – again and again. The components were refined, and the process repeated – until we all said, “Wow, this is it.” Once the massing model got the thumbs up from the extended P-Funk family, the components were fabricated at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning fabrication lab. The production and assembly took one very intense month.

What is it made of?

Supported by a base and frame of steel tubing, the module encases a metal mesh platform four feet above ground level and houses DJ equipment. It’s made from sixteen water-jet-cut aluminium panels, bolted together using simple hand tools to create a polygonal, asymmetrically pouncy shape. Disassembled, the Mothership travels flat in the back of a truck.

What kinds of technical processes and special tools were used?

We’re using contemporary digital modeling techniques, a water jet cutter, a router, welding tools, standard hardware for assembly. Nothing revolutionary. Combined, however, it creates power visual effects.

Are there style cues taken from anything that you think of as specifically “of Detroit”?

The Mothership’s cosmetic finish makes a clear reference to Afrofuturist aesthetics and sensibilities. To achieve the effect, we’re borrowing techniques from car customization: blinging the surface with polished gold vinyl and dichroic film. The result is a glistening exterior that purposefully couples popular embellishment with psychedelic interior effects. The graphic sensibility comes from a close study of P-Funk’s cover art and the incredible work of the graphic artist Pedro Bell, and the gold is an ode to the inimitable cosmic philosopher Sun Ra. What kinds of collaborative processes did you use? How many people to build it?

The designers worked closely with the ONE Mile music curator and a group of present and former Parliament-Funkadelic musicians in order to get the aesthetic sensibility of a contemporary Afrofuturist Mothership right. This was no easy task considering the original stage prop is pretty amazing and still fresh in people’s memory. Now to make the module a material reality also took a lot of effort. There were a number of specialized teams: design, technical drawing, panel fabrication, vinyl and dichroic film adhesion, and finally assembly.

About ten people worked directly on the fabrication of the components, dozens of North End residents helped assemble the structure on the day of the launch, and many more provided inspiration and feedback.

Why is it important to collaborate with people on large projects like this?

It’s key to understand that this is a self-initiated design project.

There is no client or program to answer to. Instead, thanks to the support of a number of grants, we’re exploring how art and design can produce positive impact, defined by community leadership, in challenging urban scenarios, and how well-conceived objects can galvanize collective identity and experience in surprising and inspired ways. We acknowledge that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to create a calibrated object through even the most exuberant series of collective workshops. So the Mothership is in many ways is a prompt for designers and community advocates to work with multiple disciplines and pay attention to the cultural values of a place in order to create things and experiences that are contextual and sustainable in the true sense of the word.

What impacts has the Mothership had on the North End? Where else has it traveled?

Since the Mothership’s first outing last October at the launch of the O.N.E. Mile project, when 12 past and present members of Parliament-Funkadelic staged a live concert in a garage on Oakland Avenue, the module has accompanied a number of performances and events in the North End: a Free Market Swap Shop, the Afrotopia film festival after party, spiritual healing and meditation groups, a long board skate show, to name a few. The programming, fueled by local interest and community collaboration, has brought together over 1500 residents and visitors, creating a sense of place in a historic neighborhood long overlooked by the city’s ascendant Renaissance story. What’s important about these locally-evolving programs supplemented by the Mothership’s iconographic presence, is that they have brought together a broad range of people dedicated to the cultural legacy and collective vibrancy of the neighborhood. In December it did make an exceptional landing at the Cass Commons for Noel Night.

Can you explain why the North End is important not only to Detroit’s history, but to the history of music? What is Funk?

Funk! Funk moves the world. Funk is a soul-bearing, energizing response to the stark realities of an uneven world.

Funk is also a style and an aesthetic. It’s an African-inspired music genre built on a foundation of strong rhythmic grooves made for movement, danceability and liberation. Many music historians explain that Funk originated in the mid-60’s, most attributed to James Brown and his deliriously infectious grooves starting on “the 1”. Decades since, musicians continue to be hugely influenced by funk’s heavy bass lines, guitar riffs and drum patterns, inspiring derivatives like hip hop, house music, and drum and bass. In Detroit, funk music could be found on Oakland Avenue in the North End, where a number of small, incredible venues featured the world’s top funk musicians.

George Clinton started his funk career at the Phelp’s Lounge on Oakland. John Lee Hooker innovated his signature funky-blues at the historic Apex Bar on the legendary avenue. So for all intents and purposes, the North End is Detroit’s unofficial “cradle of funk” and the Mothership is its urban marker.

How is the Mothership relevant to Detroit? Why now?

There is a lot of change happening in Detroit, quite a bit of strategic investment and “blight remediation”. The ONE Mile project started with the community concern that if unchecked, the city’s broad renewal plan threatened to erase important historical vestiges that connect Detroit’s North End and its cultural innovations to a greater national legacy. So in a sense, the Mothership is a physical reminder. It’s an icon that says important things happened in Detroit, the North End, and its outlying neighbourhoods.

Rather than plaques, the module serves as a living reminder that cultural innovation has and is happening, here.

On your website, there’s an incredible quote: “Design is a tool for broadcast.” Can you talk about how the Mothership “broadcasts”—and why design is important to you?

Design, like art and architecture, is always the product of a particular political, economic, and social context. Complacent or resistant, techno-utopian or nostalgic, design is never neutral. It invariably tells a story about the world we inhabit. We wanted to take full advantage of design’s narrative possibilities, its communicable image, by literally broadcasting a story of historic and projective resilience. To that end, we created a very idiosyncratic object, but one that’s deeply rooted in the aesthetic and symbolic realities of the North End and the funk music genre. This has allowed us to demonstrate, without plaques or lament, the important cultural activities have happened and continue to happen in the neighborhood.

We would like to express our gratitude and infinite respect for our project partners and the people of Detroit, who work with grace and determination to uphold the civic dignity of the city. While design cannot single-handedly solve the looming challenges of contemporary urbanity, you have afforded us the opportunity to explore how it can make social impact synergistically. Thank you for joining us in Saint Etienne on the occasion of the 2017 International Design Biennale.