A wall next to the Schuylkill River Trail
A piece of street art in South Philly
A collection of museum tags near the PMA
A spontaneous ink painting of a whale on rice paper, and a re-mixing collage of a tree, with spray paint, charcoal, ink, and paint swatches
Isabella Siegel Professors Paul Farber and Matt Neff Monument Lab 02 October 2017 Public Statements, Writing, and Visual Narrative My last week at Monument Lab, at Penn Treaty Park, was full of conversation about public interactions with the monuments. I was struck especially by the spectrum of conversations about Duane the piece the monument is universally appreciated, and many even expressed their love for its presence in the park. The differences that I found were in how people wanted to best take care of the monument, and their different interpretations of how it would best suit the park. The main point of contention was the idea of a fence some wanted a fence placed around the monument, keeping people away from destroying it. Others did not like the idea of this fence, thinking that it would act as a barrier (both visual and physical) between the public and the public monument. There was also the issue, which I find the most interesting, of the tagging that has now filled the wrought iron around the statue and its base. A woman named Juana, who was full of energy and excitement about the project, approached our lab in the middle of our shift. She brought along with her ideas that she had been discussing with
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they come, they smoke marijuana, and they graffiti
just a few hundred feet away, which is in fact surrounded by a fence. The artists have worked the fence into the idea for the project, but originally, the fence was mandated by their insurance policy. The statue has
remained clean of tagging and any other has been damaged by stolen wire, and the generator has been broken multiple times. A couple hours later, a Mural Arts tour leader that I had met before came up to the lab. I had gone on her tour
around it echoes the
was a completely different perspective
frozen it in time, in bright neon tubes. Her calligraphy, the cursive of a young schoolchild that is also the daughter of a Native nation, shines in the night, as well as stands like a beacon over the Delaware river during the day. The words of the piece are of the leader of the Lenne Lenape tribe at the time of the Penn Treaty, with their promise to uphold their end of the deal with William Penn. The graffiti that
curves and loops. Graffiti artists also are often working subversively. The illegality of their tagging is a
authority of the law. The graffiti around the edges of the monument will surely give rise to many more reactions, with many different opinions. It is important to recognize all of those opinions, as people have different views on tagging and what it means to respect a piece of public property and public space. Some see tagging as a reflection of a human experience, as an expression of self and a necessary freedom of speech. Others see it as a mark of deterioration and disrespect. It should also be noted that none of the tagging (thus far) was found on the face of the sculpture itself. I want to continue to investigate interactions that people have with public art, through conversations, but also physically, and how they determine the visual patchwork of their public spaces.
Graffiti tags next to Dwaine Linklater In Perpetuity. Photos courtesy of Austin Huber.
Cai Guo-Qiang
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Isabella Siegel Professors Paul Farber and Matt Neff Monument Lab 09 October 2017 Establishing Collectivity and the Commoning of Urban Spaces While working at Monument Lab, I simultaneously have the privilege of being able to work alongside the creators of Philadelphia Assembled. Being a part of both projects has so far -based social activism and research. Both projects come from large organizations that have been considered integral to the fabric of Philadelphia, especially its arts community, and both have put forward projects that are generally considered unprecedented in the city in their scale, ambition, and community-mindedness. Each have aspirations of integrating the city of Philadelphia into their
however, that the projects contain inherent differences that I plan on investigating in the coming weeks. This week, at Philadelphia Assembled, I was approached by one of the collaborators, Shari Hersch. She is running many of the programs within the project, and began speaking with me about her ideas concerning Monument Lab. I told her about my field placement at Penn Treaty, them, along with our process of gathering ideas for future monuments. Shari was critical of the
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Jeanne van Heeswijk extensively before I could understand it. I was left confused, but I wanted to find out more.
through people acting out in their own environment will lead to a network of support, a critical reading worked on various projects in cities across many countries within communities, investigating social design and community practice in arts-based research. As one of her largest projects yet, Philadelphia Assembled has reached across many neighborhoods in the city, aiming to make further ties between numerous organizations, creating a network of connections that not only envision a common goal, but concentrate on the involve build toward that common goal themselves. Monument Lab similarly reaches into communities and invites them to build into a new common ground of wisdom. In his book The City as Commons, Stravos Stavrides writes that
(Stavrides 126). I had numerous conversations this week with individuals who approached our lab, encouraging them to write down an idea they might have for a monument. These one-on-
from the project, and that plans of praxis (especially those that involve community members) are not yet present in the actual re-creation of urban space. These projects, however, may reflect entirely different practices of arts-based research one investigatory by an organization
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already embedded in the fabric of the city, the other a celebration of institutional representation and inclusivity in an institution that has yet to do so. There are many weeks ahead, however, and much more work to be done, before we may really be able to tell how these projects will operate toward their conclusions.
Graffiti at night near the Schuylkill River Trail. This wall is generally cleaned within 24 hours of tagging.
Siegel 1 Isabella Siegel Professors Matt Neff and Paul Farber Monument Lab 23 October 2017 Social Art, Social Design, Social Movement
Surely, there must be a divide things without use, but potentially hand, is a create-space of nifty chairs, uncomfortable benches, and new ways to f creativity for the world of the every. Works by Picasso give powerful messages, but are confined to the museum wall, and IKEA is hardly ever viewed as an epicenter of great art. When both are brought outside, however, into the public space, we can begin to see complications in these distinctions. Monument Lab is primarily, as we might see it, based on the assumption that we need to
-iron fence. It is most likely a white man, possibly on a horse, possibly with one hand on his hip, and almost definitely looking down upon passers-by. The goal of changing up our collective perception of what a monument should be is a grounds-up goal of switching up our identity politics. People of color, women and nonbinary individuals, the disabled, and people of all walks of life, especially those who are the most oppressed, need to be celebrated. Vashti Dubois spoke at Monument Lab Live on Wednesday, saying tha
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The Production of Space as something more than a
shape of a space: a government building, a cathedral, or the expanse of a city square. It is defined by
the space to reimagine the past as well as the future. Art can be used to reimagine the future and reconfigure the past. Design similarly augments our reality so that we do not have to accept a space as something that is finite. Further, the location or appearance of a piece of art builds in to the structure and design of a city-space. The way an inhabitant moves and lives around a monument, in the very dayto-day, is the core of the visual landscape design of that space, influencing a sense of place, and thus, a sense of self. ward our work as something that is for art, but is also for design and continued innovation. In The City as Commons, artist and activist Stavros Stavrides defines common space as something that is forever changing. It accepts newcomers and new ideas, and cannot be imagined as a final destination, but as something within a social movement, is forever reorganizing
is vision of common space is one that expands throughout a society. Monument Lab may be on the verge of doing so as well: it has inspired the genesis of Paper Monuments, a new project modeled after its design in New Orleans. Within the context of replacing monuments that once stood for Confederate generals, the history of the location is different,
Installation in Fishtown, near Penn Treaty Park. It was left undisturbed for at least 3 months.
Siegel 1 Isabella Siegel Professors Matt Neff and Paul Farber Monument Lab 23 October 2017 Social Engagement and Approaches to Monumentality This week was fascinating, exciting, and potentially overall life-changing in my study of public art. I came back early on my Fall break to attend the luncheon with the heads of Paper Monuments, Sue Mobley and Bryan C. Lee. I was interested in their process as one that has stemmed from Monument Lab, and was also drawn to the discussion by my deep love for the city of New Orleans. I have had the privilege of being able to visit the city twice over the past few years, and every day that I spent in that city was an adventure in color, music, culture, and overall, the tenacity of life and human spirit. There is a certain magic that New Orleans has that may permeate our culture based on fabricated mythology, and can certainly be traced back to a capitalistic venture in the industry of tourism. This energy, however, is based on a truth of a certain character of the city that for me, makes it an island of
home in New Haven on Tuesday to hear Bryan and Sue talk. Researching their experience before coming to the luncheon, I was also interested in their leadership in Colloquate Design. The organization is based on a goal of the design of spaces, rather than solely art, and how this can function as an equalizing measure in communities. I had recently been researching the uses of art as well as spatial design in methods of communing, and was also interested in Cairo, the site of possibly the most successful public protest that specifically utilized art and spatial design in 2011. At the luncheon, while I learned that she was not present at the time of the protest, she did know many people that after she left Cairo were major actors in the political struggle. In New Orleans today, they are directly involved in
Siegel 2 another political struggle in the shape of public space: tearing down Confederate and white supremacist monuments. Ken Lum asked the both of them a question about their experience in design, and how they plan to approach the model of Monument Lab, which he may have seen as primarily based off of concepts of contemporary art. The following discussion that they had (Sue wanted to make clear that her backgrou
and monumental elements that are present just as much as any other structures. Replacing a towering figure of a KKK Grand Wizard with a piece of art that reflects equality and recognizes the humanity of everyone in the city, an appropriate monument for New Orleans today (and one should argue, for many decades past as well,) is building into an integral part of the design of that city. I spoke with Bryan and Sue following the luncheon and following the talk the next day as well, (at Monument Lab Live in PAFA,) and was overjoyed to agree to work with them next summer on Paper Monuments in New Orleans. At my site this week at Penn Treaty, I felt a newfound exhilaration and excitement, attempting to think of ways that the human body and the spaces that we inhabit may work together in our day to day experiences. The politics of representation are paramount to this process Vashti Dubois spoke on Wednesday about who is represented in these monuments the vast majority of
week, upon walking up to the site, there were two people dancing capoeira, a traditional Brazilian martial art combining methods of street fighting and dance. I learned that this was originally a method of expressing feelings of anger by enslaved peoples, who blended together these different disciplines into what has evolved into a beautiful and unique improvisational street art. The performance of this dance in front of a monument to those who were effectively enslaved throughout the course of American history was haunting as it was celebratory of art forms that express human spirit. I was
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will not be taken apart and thrown away, but will
instead be placed in the care of the Penn Treaty museum across the street. I have many questions about this decision, and I want to learn much more about the decision process. I would love to know what Dwaine Linklater thinks about it, and what the Friends of Penn Treaty think about it. I am interested in the museum as an entity as well, one that seems to be striving for historical accuracy and equality, however, one that is not run by Native individuals. I am also
to the side or near the periphery. While this is almost certainly better than not having it at all or wasting it, it continues to reflect a long history of the people themselves that were pushed off of the land by white landowners. If the decision were left up to Native Peoples, both as artists and as museum owners, city planners, and groundkeepers, what would they propose? What would their vision be for the park, in perpetuity?
Capoeira dancers near In Perpetuity
Afropick at night, decorated with Wawa cups
Sonia Sanchez at Celebrating Activism at PHLA
A fresh paint job
Images from the KLIP Collective installation and Southeast by Southeast Monument Lab event
Isabella Siegel Professors Paul Farber and Matt Neff Monument Lab October 10th, 2017
This week at Monument Lab, I had a long conversation with a 5-year-old girl as she drew her
coloring enough to sit down and explain the entire process to me. I learned that she was drawing her mother, and her brother, who had passed away last year. She made a large bed, and a few floating heads that eventually became attached to stick figure bodies. She saved the right half of the drawing for the end, sa before, and I was struck by the huge breadth of things that she seemed confident about drawing, which led to a strange, abstract chaos all over the page. I read the Atlantic and written by Isabel Fattal. I learned that developmental psychologists have been trying to figure out why kids draw the way they do for decades. What we do know now is that kids have a much more abstract approach to doing art, not having absorbed a (fairly Westernized) concept of art that it
to be realistic and show everything in the correct proportions and perspectives. This is why objects in the same scene can appear at different sizes and may seem to float in the air across the page. They may also use the speed of the crayon to describe a speeding object, so a quick line across the page drawn by a racing arm could represent at truck. Many modern artists, such as Robert Motherwell and Paul Klee,
representation, and often veering towards the abstract. This abstraction and intense creativity could be a helpful tool when considering our views on the city around us and its monuments. It can break down our ideas of permanence in architecture, art,
design, and society. It can help us change up our ideas about what a monument can and should be. I went on a school trip to the top of City Hall on Friday, and when I got home, decided to draw the amazing views. I tried to begin moving the drawings from something representational to something slightly more abstract, representing a vibrancy in the city. I started to notice things that I liked thinking about, such as the transparency of the buildings I had drawn, and the movements up and down the street. I sometimes added in extra buildings and subtracted others, but learned how to quickly multiply buildings by their design. Seeing the city from above is a unique and amazing experience, and such a wildly different perspective of the city. I want to see if I can move into more abstraction, but with closer representation of how I feel about the city. This kind of exercise might offer new solutions to the problem of creating an appropriate monument for that city.
Street art on the Schuylkill River Trail
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! View from the top of City Hall
Street art on Emerald Street in Kensington
El Seed, the team, and the mural
Isabella Siegel Professors Paul Farber and Matt Neff Monument Lab 13 November 2017 Visual Topography, Landscape, and Layers of Perception I would like to propose a final project that will come together as an oral history and an interactive piece of art. I made maps of Philadelphia neighborhoods for my internship this past summer at FringeArts for the 2017 Fringe Festival Guide, and recently reformatted them so that just the streets are left, without any of the street names. I have seen maps of Philly pop up again and again - from inside the 2nd street MFL stop, to covering the walls of the Perelman Building in the Philadelphia Assembled galleries. There appears to be a certain connection and identification that many Philadelphians have to their map, and especially the map of the
that make up public space in Philadelphia, while working through the visual landscape and Production of Space, Illuminations, Invisible Cities, and The City as Commons, and use a theoretical framework for layers of time and space within a city, as well as the practical framework, from my interactions and conversations with people in the field. To do this, I would like to take sheets of clear acetate, and draw on to them physical representations of each of the following layers for each neighborhood: a map of the streets, a mural, a tree or other plant life, a map of the SEPTA system, a piece of graffiti, a portrait, a building (or group of buildings,) words that I gather from an oral history, and possibly one more undetermined layer that may represent time and invisible layers of connectivity between spaces. Each of these images and texts will be found in the neighborhood on the map. Ideally, these would be large sheets that could be hung from a coat hanger with physical hangers, and the viewer could rearrange it, either to represent how they experience that area of the city, or to bring out each layer that they might not have seen before.
s that have helped me think about how I would like to approach this project. The first two are portraits of two women I
took on Sunday around the Schuylkill river, just over the bridge on 31st street. One image shows the natural elements of the city lain over the architectural landscape, and the others incorporate another layer, the fence separating the street from the train-
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still visible through the fence, but it adds another physical and visual layer. I also added a picture of the recent graffiti and vandalism of In Perpetuity, which was taken by Austin Huber. Just from a visual perspective, I find it interesting that because of the translucent aspect of the piece, you can see layers of the graffiti, the piece underneath, and the park behind it, and in this photo, an American flag. I have also uploaded two concept maps. One is a map I made a couple weeks ago that
our discussion in class about our project ideas. I am thinking through how I want to go about this project and come at it from different angles, preferably, working it into final projects for all four of
visualizing how different layers and ongoing projects can fit into the design. The last two images are two of the maps I drew this past summer for the Fringe Festival Guide, to give you an image of what the neighborhood maps might look like.
Sock fern, several months later
Isabella Siegel 21 November 2017 Monument Lab Professors Paul Farber and Matt Neff The Last Week at the Lab and El Seed The last week at the lab was extremely cold, and very windy. Our flag kept being knocked down, and the trees almost looked like they would bowl over at any second. We were very cold, but we kept on doing our tasks. Andrew brought a space heater to the space, which we were very grateful to have. A few people stopped by, which I was happy to see. A couple of them commented on the tagging of
one of our visit I talked with Andrew a little about how the piece got vandalized. He was at the park with Nielli, and saw that there were a lot of kids hanging around the monument, althou they were doing anything. It was a crowded day, and a few other kids had just been warned that they
and when they came out again, the kids had run away, and In perpetuity was covered in the words it has now. It was strange to me that it happened in broad daylight, but also surprising to hear how young the kids were that did it. It seemed like they also had little pause to stop and see what the monument was about their goal was probably not a statement against any particular body or person, but something other than that. I was interested to see that the Lenne Lenape flag was raised below the American flag on the pole in front of
tribe in the wake of the damage to the monument.
It was not the only Mural Arts project to experience difficulties this week! I was very grateful to
in West Philly. While the crew was away, about $3,000 of paint was stolen from the site. They were able to replace the paint, but most likely, were not able to initial costs and had to find some other form of funding. Although this and the rain were both detriments, most of the project was a very joyful experience. I joined them on Monday, watching El Seed and one of the painters, Malachi, sketch out the form of the mural all day on Tuesday. I spoke with Malachi and Antonio, a photography student who was shadowing the videographer, Dave. Malachi and Antonio were both natives of West Philadelphia, and we had an extensive conversation about the art in the city and its effects on their lives. Malachi was very vocal about the positive impact that Mural Arts had on his life. He said that he loved seeing the murals, and that they were really the only exposure to art he had most of the time. He started painting for Mural Arts and through that, received a lot of training as well as compensation for his work. I also spoke with Steph, (while joining in the painting on Thursday,) another painter in the project and muralist for Mural Arts. She, and many others involved in the project, was especially happy
had rarely had such a close exchange with a neighborhood before completing a mural. The mural is much more abstract than many that we are more used to seeing, like the portraits in the painting s a quote from W.E.B. DuBois on the need for equality, translated into Arabic calligraphy, and condensed into a
the dedication, and met Ann, who project. This mural is one of the components of that project, and it was a powerful moment for me as well, as a daughter in a family of immigrants and refugees. Being able to work on the mural and talk with El Seed and the entire team was such an amazing experience, and is one I will never forget.
In Perpetuity, vandalized
Tags on the Monument Lab Posters on the side of our lab at Penn Treaty
El Seed s mural, in progress
Individual and installation shots of Wig/Wed/Way at Bryn Mawr
Poster design for Graffiti in the Grass
Map of Penn Treaty Park, drawn from memory by Austin Huber
Street art and common space park, Navarinou Park, in Exarchaeia, Athens, Greece
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Lay/Lines Isabella Siegel/Haverford College/2019 Year
We each see the spaces in which we live in a different light, and even more so, the neighborhoods which are foreign to us. I entered into monument lab fascinated with graffiti and street art, particularly on the streets of Philadelphia. Throughout my time many components that make up the visible and invisible layers of Philadelphia. These may consist of the architecture, the murals, and the train system, but they are also made up of people, their passages, and the words and works they leave behind. I attempted to create Penn Treaty park was located, from my own .I was fascinated by the connection that people have to their neighborhood as the walls around them shift with the tide of gentrification. Simultaneously, we acted as bearers of a lost public history, the displacement of the Lenne Lenape tribe, whose home was once on the land of the park. Other layers start to appear layers of time and space, memory and lived experience. layers of Fishtown and draw them onto sheets of clear acetate. The acetate is hung so that you can see through each layer onto the layers behind it. You, as the viewer, can rearrange the layers, and interact with the work to bring layers to the front, or push others behind. They are all connected together by a spiral, which was a shape that became apparent again and again. I did not interpret this one way or the other this project is not meant to be an but instead, a reflection of my experiences in that place, and a space where you may interpret it to form alternative reflections of your own, meditating on the seen and the unseen. Monument Lab: Public Art & Civic Research
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Collage activity for Dr. Li Sumpter’s closing event at the Haverford VCAM
Graffiti tour with Conrad Benner from StreetsDept
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Janice!Ciesielski’s!!Monument!Lab!proposal!
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Brother Tommy Lee, Marlon MacAllister, and Dr. Li Sumpter at “The Power Myth” at PHLA
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! ! ! ! Observing art critique as a TA
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Design for the cover of the 2017-2018 edition of Body Text
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“Sips and Stains” at James House
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Isabella Siegel Professor Aniko Szucs Artists Under the Policing Gaze of the State 22 December 2017 LAY/LINES: The Hidden Layers of Philadelphia
discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything (Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities). We each see the spaces in which we live in a different light, and even more so,
working, living, and generating a collection of memories of the city of Philadelphia. Simultaneously, I researched the history and theory of graffiti and street art, which has led me to explore the many seen and unseen components that weave together to form the fabric of the cityscape. Our cities are dense with invisible layers. Unseen networks of electricity, social ties, and energy expand and contract around us. Walls contain layers of time and memory, in marks and traces both seen and unseen. Based on my experiences of walking through three neighborhoods of Philadelphia, LAY/LINES is a project that is an exploration these places, I attempted to create representations of some of these layers hidden within them, that you can rearrange any way you choose, while asking yourself: What do you see in the city? What do you wish you could see? Or perhaps, what do you hope for the futures of our cities?
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essence of that person out onto the surface of the page. Last year was the first time that
they can help underrepresented peoples through their portraits. This is often applied to marginalized groups. For example, an artist might make a huge mural of a Black woman, thus increasing her representation in a city, supposedly leading to better
major ways. Not only does this represent a person by their outer skin (bringing validity
dangerous paradigm in the first place. When a group of people is marginalized based on visual profiling by police and other authority figures, then it takes much more to make
for me as an artist. I had previously found great joy in drawing s faces, especially the moment when the drawing
now, it seemed like making a drawing of someone just emphasized their position as being profiled. This was not the only theoretical struggle, however, that I experienced with my drawings. My other focus is on geometrical
detailed ornament since I was 12. I recently realized that
Figure 1 "Amelia in Gold," a portrait from 2015
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what people first think when looking at these patterns). I have ADHD, but also, cognitive
to become jumbled, which often makes traditional academics exceedingly difficult. Drawing these patterns became a way of grounding myself by focusing my mind on a
year, incorporating geometrized symbols of everyday life into the designs. I already feel like I see the world in an altered way due to my cognitive disability - by working through these designs, I felt like I could approach and understand my reality in a new way. This
Figure 2 "Figures with Empty Flowers"
became complicated, however, when I started interacting with theories of signs and symbols, and the detrimental, reductive powers of semiotics. These reductive powers often revolved around criticisms of everyday mythology. I started finding these theories in Barthes, but also, in Benjamin, Lefebvre, Foucault, and more. These theorists often have a tendency to idolize or demonize certain
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phenomena. This manifests in their writing styles, but also in the theory itself. Lefebvre is especially dismissive of symbols and the systems of semiology. In his texts, myths become dangerous tools of enslavement by both communist and capitalist regimes. These myths use symbols and discourse to abstract the world around us, and to reduce complicated concepts to simple thought, thus brainwashing entire nations of peoples. I was concerned, again, about my own artistic strategies. I had essentially done the same, boiling down ideas into symbols, and repeating them over and over so that they become reduced patterns. Problematizing portraits and patterns was one starting point for LAY/LINES. I
neighborhood residents. I tried to go out and gather these dialogues - but found that
impossible. In addition, not only was I missing the conversations I wanted, but I realized that
into geometrically reducing these places into ornamental patterns, taking away any traces of reality or lived experience. I knew that if I were to continue and keep any integrity in the project as a privileged, white outsider, I would have to change it. I started by looking back at the material that I already had. The project is meant to be a culmination of five different courses throughout the semester. One of these was working with Monument Lab, the Mural Arts project that asked both artists from around
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between the Philadelphia Museum of Art, artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, and over 160 collaborators around the city. This became a summer of outdoor free events around the city, a gallery of art and artifacts in the Perelman Building, and an autumn of workshops, panels, and discussions within the walls of the museum. I also had the opportunity to lead a student seminar in graffiti and street art at Haverford. It was called The Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Street art, and the Organic Architecture of the City. In addition, I was studying 300 level experimental drawing, and of course, Artists Under the Policing Gaze of the State. I was faced with the task of blending together the fieldwork I was doing throughout the semester with the theoretical work I was doing simultaneously, into a singular praxis. Fortunately, I found that reading theory influenced the way that I was practicing out in the field, and the way I was practicing out in the field influenced my reading of theory. This sometimes became exhausting, however, when reading The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre. In the text, widely accepted realities are reversed and turned inside out. He discusses invisible networks and layers that are
general, give rise for their part to an appearance of separation between spaces where in fact what exists is an ambiguous continuity. The space of a room, bedroom, house or garden may be cut off in a sense from social space by barriers and walls, by all the
Walls are no longer simply boundaries, but evolving surfaces layered with traces, marks, and a collective memory that makes up a grand palimpsest expanding over
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every part of a city. He emphasizes, however, that these many layers are not to be looked at simply as layers. Instead, they can be envisioned as layers of liquid. When I read this quote, I had a flashback to one of the most mind-bending moments I have ever experienced from TV. I was watching an episode of Planet Earth, the groundbreaking documentary television series that went deeper than anyone had before with a camera into the surface of the earth. It was the Caves episode, and the crew was venturing into one of the
Figure 3 A diver swimming through a halocline
deepest underwater caverns. In one of the few moments of the series when a human enters into the frame, you see a cave-lake diver swimming under the surface what appears to be a slightly murky pool of water. Then, the diver rises, and unbelievably breaks through the surface to float above - she looks halocline, a meeting of salt water and clear water. The waters have such disparate densities that they separate out into two layers, the lighter one floating to the top, so that they appear to be separate, but in fact can swirl together at the slightest touch. After agitation and mixing, however, they will separate out again, in the illusion that they are separate objects of water and air. A much more fruitful analogy, it seems to me, may be found in hydrodynamics, where the principle of superimposition of small movements teaches us the importance of roles played by scale, dimension, and rhythm. Great movements, vast rhythms, immense waves
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the other hand, interpenetrate. If we were to follow this model, we would say that any social locus could only be properly understood by taking two kind of determinations into account: on the one hand, that locus would be mobilized, carried forth and sometimes smashed apart by major
other hand, it would be penetrated by, and shot through with, the weaker tendencies characteristic of networks and pathways (Lefebvre 86).
is mixed, remixed, and reversed. Normal becomes surreal, ordinary becomes extraordinary, realities become myths, alternative realities become possibilities, and graffiti becomes a valid form of free speech. An individual, at any time, could in theory mobilize some kind of mixing in the layers, and large movements could result in huge interferences and reorganization of space and our cognition of space. But what do we have to reorganize? How does our cognition of space influence our reality? In the vein of this theory, reality has been constructed around us according
that is, that over time, all that is concealed will be revealed, and we will continue to be able to render more and more images of reality, in increasing quality and exactitude. Visual logic, as Lefebvre writes, dicta receives more light; that its naves no longer bear all the weight, and that the pillars, small columns and ribbing rise with slender elegance towards the vault; that stainedglass windows make their appearance and making of them becomes an art. More than
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this, too; that the Scholastic mind accepts and even demands a double clarification - the
(Lefebvre 259). Panofsk thinkers to be tempted to both see more and show more. Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because it has been demolished, whether the cause is some enchantment or only a whim, I do not know. The fact remains that is has no walls, no ceilings, no floors: it has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be: a forest of pipes that end in taps, showers, spouts, overflows (Calvino 49). Calvino emphasizes the network within this city, Armilla as well as an eruption of the hidden water system into the public eye. This is an invisible network of pipes that live within every city, and it is brought out into the open, at the same time becoming a legible structure for the masses, through visual logic. Lefebvre, however, takes it even
259). In The Production of Space, Lefebvre approaches this with the movement of the artistic object from hiding out into the open. What once was considered magical, or kept into the light...this goes far beyond Gothic architecture and involves the towns, political action, rises as the representative movement, the eruption of creative forms from the crypt into the outside world.
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eventually settles in the monumental form,) which ultimately show the priority that is given to the sense of sight over the other senses. It follows that assumptions are made based on simple images of the cityscape. Walter Benjamin was similarly interested in
visual logic through the transition of the artistic object from a magical relic (that which is hidden from view) into the scientific
are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out: with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work...With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their product encounters visual logic. A second appears in other texts, where he uses the term denkbilder
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scholar from Greece, writes abou
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through which people think about their cities. People seem to employ for their thoughts on their society images which are most readily available or can be most easily constructed out of their everyday experiences. This is why it is perhaps not enough to criticize against forms of legitimation based on exceptional monumental or heroic
can participate in struggles against the capillary diffusion of legitimized domination (Stavrides 219).
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Cognition is an individual process. When each individual, however, visualizes the city, it is common to pare down our memories to one, simple image. And while it is individual, the denkbilder is a collective action and thus a collective experience, as well as a
us, but it does not recognize the many other layers that are present all around us. inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once, that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of images, and this awareness prevents them from succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness...it is not so much their copulating or murdering that matters as the copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror. (Calvino 53) Calvino describes Valdada as a city that has been so far flung into imagery that it has reduced into the very image of itself. It ignores everything that exists beneath the surface, and is consumed with its reflection in the lake next to it. It is the extreme of
difficult to say. The walls around us condense layers of public and private history, evolved space, and collective memory. Visible layers of graffiti amount to marked and de-marked (erased) walls and an ever-changing palimpsest. Invisible layers consist of both the previous natural landscape and the future natural landscape of the ground we stand on. Social connections, electrical connections, even lines of sight, flowering into eye contact, intermingle in unseen networks that are extended around and through each of us as we walk through the city. Walking through Fishtown on the way to Penn Treaty park, (my lab site for Monument Lab,) I wanted to find a method visual representation that I could use to mix
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ary
though they were centered around art, they become places to hear people in the city. They both provided spaces where we acted as witnesses, lending our ears rather than our eyes. People came to us and ended up talking about their memories, their fears,
reig people myself in the creation of LAY/LINES, I realized that not only was this work already done, but I was almost obligated use the vast bank of knowledge already present from my previous experiences and those of others. I gathered pictures I had taken of the trees, the streets, the murals, the graffiti, the community projects, and finally, Monument Lab proposals where people had already spoken to us at length about all of t
memories about walking through and living in those spaces. Using acetate and paint markers, I drew out all of the layers that I found to speak to me the most. The project changed, becoming an image of my own experience of walking through Fishtown. Looking at the work in progress with my friend, we noticed some recurring themes. There was a strong sense of perspective, of receding space, and with that, of spirals, swirling around a center. I connected these together with a physical spiral, visible through all of the clear sheets. With every sheet resting on top of one another, a dense mesh of lines began to appear. Outlines of buildings, lines of
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letters that make up signs, lines of graffiti tags, lines in maps, lines of the telephone wires, and of the branches of the trees. Without separating the clear plastic sheets, these lines all came together, and at once, became chaos.
together - I couldn't help thinking it would look something like this. While all of these networks were mixed together, they fell apart, fragmenting into a swirling, buzzing field. I could tell you how many steps make up the streets...but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of space and its event in the past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a
Figure 4 The initial drawings stacked together
strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that
Invisible Cities describes hidden layers and networks that exist within the
networks into chaos. As per suggestion, when drawing the first neighborhood, I used red gel paper to make a shape that connected each of the clear layers together. Following the theme of receding perspective and of circles, it became a spiral. In
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segments of the spiral, the gel paper highlights the lines, and the layers have moments where they stand alone, rather than all at once. Brief moments of clarity can rise out of confusion, even if they are moments of half, or a quarter, of this clarity. When hung in a line, however, I want the viewer to play with the piece by changing around the layers. They can move layers they wished they saw more of to the front to change the way they see a neighborhood, or they can rearrange it to show how they already see it. It is not a - the experience of space is individual to that who walks through it. Instead, I want to provide a space for the viewer to consider the invisible layers of the city, and start to think through the complexities that arise when thinking about such layers. Beginning with re-mixing vision itself, and the very image of the city, there may be ways of imagining alternative realities for our future. I created three neighborhood
spiral,) West Philly (with a green teardrop,) and South Philly (with a yellow pyramid.) Each of the shapes made up a spiralized form when cut into pieces and spread out among hanging sheets. I included different layers based South Philly had more layers about light, for Figure 5 The drawings with the added spiral
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based off of some of my experiences in Monument Lab, I did not include a layer that included a monument itself. The project comes about at a time when tensions are at an all-time high over the presence of confederate monuments, which are continually
its prestige, or can only retain it by means o
versions of the project could incorporate these monumental statues themselves, my interest was rather in monumental space as a whole. Lefebvre writes that, Monumental space offered each member of a society an image of that membership, an image of his or her social visage. It thus constituted a collective mirror more faithful than any personal one...the monument thus effected a rendering it practical and concrete. The element of repression in it and the element of exaltation could scarcely be disentangled; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the repressive element was metamorphosed into exaltation. (Lefebvre 220) Here, the monument is both a reflection of a partially mythologized public history, but also, monumentality is expanded beyond a traditional monument, and into the space surrounding a city dweller as they walk through the street. I instead drew the architecture as the layer that includes most of this monumentality, but in theory, it could also be expanded to the map of the city.
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Here, monumentality monuments be effective and powerful reflections of collective memory, but they can take many forms other than statues. Monument Lab broke down my ideas of what monuments are, as it did for many of us. Other layers can include elements of the monument - the mural of the fish, the graffiti on the wall, the weeping willow hanging
hang in car windshields and house windows. In the Fishtown neighborhood piece, I also incorporated the words of Janice, who came to the lab site almost every day towards the end of the project. Her testimony spoke of her time living in the area, and the way that she is moved by the natural elements in the world around her. Among the asphalt, concrete, high rise towers, busses, etc., and the hordes of people, I would nominate something that can re-connect us to
The river can be placid and silken, it can look like there are diamonds on the water, it can seem to flow North or South depending on the winds, sometimes there are whitecaps...But Mother Nature also sends ducks, geese, sparrows, wrens, pigeons, crows, seagulls, an occasional hawk,
for. To not forget that connection. (Janice Ciesielsky, Monument Lab Archives, PT 248) Her proposal was itself peeling back layers of architecture, city sounds and movements, to find the underlying presence of nature all around us.
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Many people like Janice are working to peel back the facades that are presented to us as if they are the whole of reality. I named my project LAY/LINES, in reference to I believe in them myself -
- but many
find solace in the idea that Philadelphia is built on top of one of these lines. Some attempt to visualize them, while others are content in their belief that they exist without defacement. Michael
on language, bringing out their inherent magic nowhere more than when those objects
describes defacement as something that can be accomplished by graffiti and street art, demand
The Battle is Joined works in this way, covering the Battle of Germantown Memorial, and asks people to reconsider their public history aligned with that monument. Graffiti works well as a method of defacement, and is probably even the first
vandalism, or even defamation. Graffiti can begin breaking down accepted systems of
study of critical awareness in Brazilian street art, they reference Scollon and Scollon, c indexicality, that is, a linking of
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McGafferty 6). Graffiti interacts through speech with a landscape formerly accepted as
a movements in the 70s from famous artists (such as Warhol,) to student riots, all which
artwork and the viewer, a wall painting negates the gap between lived time and pictorial time, permitting the work to engage larger
theorists, and space and time are mixed together through the medium of graffiti and other wall-art, and through this method, the essence of the message is less inhibited by the semiotic limitations of language. Defacement may work in this way to reveal the myths that shapes our reality. Mythology that inspires colonialism can be pulled away to reveal realities of In Perpetuity, which highlighted and memorialized the original home of the Lenni Lenape tribe in Penn Treaty park. (We might also point out that an additional layer needs to be pulled back to reveal the layer of myth in the first place - perhaps a layer of the semblance of normalcy.) Destructive mythology, (such as colonialist manifest destiny,) is revealed to us by Lefebvre in his assessment of the nation state as inherently violent. When
lifeblood of this space, of this strange body. A violence sometimes latent, now against
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the world; and a violence everywhere glorified in triumphal arches...gates squares, and
conversation, tying it together with the bloody mythology that creates the (Western) colonialist state. You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another
of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest are silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are. Finally, the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-
house; a tankard, the
Calvino follows the same train of thought as Barthes, Benjamin, and Lefebvre. Marco Polo, upon talking with Genghis Kahn, at one point speaks to him through emblems. Kahn is frustrated by this system, and has to keep learning more. He wishes shall
this context, the attention to symbols and mythology does not only reduce layers of reality, but it reduces the self. Myths are powerful forces that need to be reckoned with, and such theorizing can make them especially frightening. We have the power, however, not only to reconcile
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with current myths that shape our vision of reality, but also, to lay our own myths down in their place. I struggled with the predominant theories on mythology, symbols, and
that pulled the neighborhoods together, or patterns within the makeup of the architecture. These worries, however, were eased by the presence of Dr. Li Sumpter. A PhD in mythology, Sumpter had an entirely different approach to the topic. While she concedes that mythology can be used for evil, her theory is that it is a powerful tool that can be used for good as well. Like water, mythology can either - timeless vessels of memory and the infinite imagination. In times of existential and ecological crisis, myths become weapons of resistance and tools of survival against the
help us create an image for a different kind of future. A well-referenced quote from Walida Ishmara subversive form there is: for it is where all other forms of decolonization are born. Once
Imagining these realities is also sometimes termed world-building. This work involves the kind of art that Dr. Sumpter is making, that shows a different approach to mythmaking. While there may be validity to this in the context of lethal mythology, the work of Sumpter (and many others, like Ishmara,) can use the power of mythology to remix our own realities for the better.
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...of all our cognitive capacities, imagination is the one that permits us to give credence to alternative realities. It allows us to break with the taken for granted, to set aside familiar distinctions and definitions. (bell hooks) The author bell hooks joins Sumpter and Ishmara in the faith she places in the human capacity for re-imagination within reality. These are the kinds of practices that
-image and our mirage - as seen through the mirror of absolu
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image, and it is a myth. It defines the reality of those that live within the confines of the city. Changing reality, however, seems possible when we reorganize both space and
represented in the concrete form of a container which pre259). Here, Stravides has presented an understanding of space that alters most views on sovereignty, breaking down space as something other than a commodity. Rather than a commodity, Stavrides imagines further possibilities by commoning space. space, for Stavrides, is an ever evolving and ever welcoming space, that thrives off of connectivity and equal opportunity. It is not necessarily anti-capitalistic, but instead, offers alternatives to capitalist networks, and the opportunity to envision alternative
different culture but as necessarily hybrid collective works-in-progress, in which
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element in the common space. In order to expand the power of commoning, the space nd thus transforms the community...as well as those who are not simply attracted by and integrated into it but those who essentially become coa stable utopia. It does not find one finite goal, and recognizes mutability as a component of its survival. Like
Like water, it changes with the context of its time, expanding and contracting, erodes and crashes, and more than anything, it is generative of new life. These spaces are possible through the telling of our own mythologies, acceptance of radical change within slowly evolving atmospheres, and recognition of the boundless layers underneath our accepted realities. Invisible networks can be explored and uncovered, through telling
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our own story, created as well, in spaces of commoning. By re-mixing our very memories and assumptions about the space of our neighborhoods, by refusing gentrification and by recognizing a true collective public history, we can work towards re-imagining a different future for everyone in Philadelphia and beyond.
Figure 6 Stacked drawings of "South Philly"
Figure 7 Stacked drawings of "West Philly"
Successive masking through layers, near 30th Street train yard
West Philly perspective at night
West Philly perspective at day
Fishtown from LAY/LINES
West Philly from LAY/LINES
South Philly from LAY/LINES
Installation shots of LAY/LINES