it ain't cheap, but it's sexy

Theaster Gates presenting The Dorchester Project

"It ain't cheap, but it's sexy"  - just one the many choice phrases spoken by Theaster Gates, who presented The Dorchester Project at this past weekend's two-day Accidental Publics Symposium, co-hosted and sponsored by Northwestern University and School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The symposium focused on temporary works of public art that, by nature, created an "accidental" or unintentional audience or community. The purpose of the symposium was to explore the ways in which these projects help "bridge the art and everyday life divide in present tense and real space."

I attended Saturday's discussion at SAIC on "Claiming Public Space" with presenters Dara Greenwald and Olivia Robinson (Spectres of Liberty), Theaster Gates (The Dorchester Project), Kyle Tidd (K1-430), Adam Farcus (Store Interventions) and Fereshteh Toosi (The Fourth River).

All of the talks were incredible explorations into the role of art in shaping and investigating our public realm, but to me Theaster Gates' Dorchester Project was the most compelling. Like me, he is primarily interested in visual art and urban/community planning, but does not limits his project to these fields of design, recognizing that all artistic disciplines and ways of viewing and interpreting the world are interrelated. The Dorchester Project is a house, 6918 S. Dorchester, on Chicago's South Side, that Theaster is continually transforming into a space for "creative activity" that is centered around a kitchen serving traditional soul food and Japanese cuisine. I'm planning on visiting the house, so I'll write more in detail when I do. But some of the themes from his talk that really resonated with me are:

1. These projects enable us to rely less on traditional institutions - museums, schools etc - as means to disseminate and receive cultural, historical and artistic information, and thereby create opportunities to develop deeper and more complex meaning and relationships with others and the world around us.
2. The role of this project as an "anti-gentrification" tool. The house allows people who would otherwise have no reason to visit this South Side neighborhood to engage in a new type of community. This community is independent of the typical commercial and residential transformations associated with gentrification. Instead of suggesting that people buy (cheap!) property in his neighborhood, Theaster encourages people to rent plots of land for gardening, or other community activities, in order to participate in more meaningful ways to the neighborhood.

Theaster (or should I say, Professor Gates), also teaches at the University of Chicago and is a fun-loving, brilliant and hilarious guy. Can't wait to check this project out and actually get a chance to chat with him.

Check out photos of the project via Theaster's site.