DREAMCATCHER 2015

REANIMATING THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE

A FACTORY FOR ARTS AND LIVING

Building #13 was a semi-legal multiple-collective live-work and performance space in Olneyville, Rhode Island. These collective live-work spaces played an important role in the cultural regeneration of the city, as well as preserving the buildings against further decay. This role was under-recognized by the political and economic forces of the city. In 2013, the Olneyville Housing Corporation acquired the building and evicted the residents. The process was contentious. In order to bring more understanding to the city of the important role these spaces played in cultural life, Delta_Ark constructed two installations and wrote a long text about events in the building.

The Map

boiling the void

massive - muscular - a width of brick - a length of rib -

wind where wall was - a smoke stained hall -

detritus removed from the chest - swinging doors -

stars on cracked glass - wire threaded into bone -

a light bulb by a rib - a shadow in a window -

a dynamo - a kicking limb - current taps the marrow -

foundations hum - lights burn - boiling the void -

For the first installation, Delta_Ark took over a room and converted it into a projection space. A projection was created for the glass facing the street that spoke to the current state of the building. The video below show various aspects of the building’s interior and exterior.

Oh no, Wait, it’s the machines

You’d walk or bike on this uneven pavement. You’d head for this door on the top of the stairs. You’d see this light --abstract --brutal --that legacy: two hundred years and talking about having shows in the void with a push lawnmower. Trying to run people over. Breaking 8ft. fluorescent tubes. Water dripping from the roof window panes -- You’d just fold into the space and hear from both sides this “who-whis-wuu-wuu-w-whi-hishuhh.” This multiple granular synthesis noise of all the things happening at the same time. It was like the ocean some kind of ocean wave sound and you’re like “it’s the ocean, oh, no, wait, it’s the machines.”

testimony selection poems

For the second installation, the former occupants were interviewed about their time in the building and their interviews were distilled into short texts that were wrapped into a network diagram and projected alongside the building. The full text can be viewed in very clean animated form here. The interviews spoke of various parts of the experience of living inside of the buildings. The texts discuss the “feeling” of the building. They discuss the relationships among the collectives. Spaces like this allow for new forms of architecture, art and social organizing to emerge, but they also have an edge to them and its concomitant dangers. The full text of this part of the installation can be read here.

the what cheer brigade

Brass brass everyone - brass brass everywhere -

there’s music coming out of the sky-doors.

J. seems like a dick - music - 

tone - pitch -slick - will any of this work?

Thirty songs - let’s go.

The Sky Brigade is a 19-piece brass band -

from Providence, RI, USA. 

Our sound is an aggressive mix -

of Bollywood, The Balkans, New Orleans, Samba and Hip-Hop - 

played with the intensity of metal, requiring no amplification.

We prove that great parties need no electricity - 

our live shows defy boundaries - 

appealing equally to punks and farmers, old and young.

glass, the long text

Throughout the process of making the installations, DeltArk kept a record. This record was then distilled down into a poetic text. This poetic text discusses the relationship between Delta_Ark and various people that were interviewed or various people that visited the space, as well as between the collectives and the Olneyville Housing Corporation. The text also includes fantastic elements, and projections of the building into the far future. The focus of the text is the dialectic between creativity and danger, in these kinds of spaces, as well as the relationship between decay and rebirth. This text can be read in its entirety here.

the temporary autonomous zone

Consider Freetown Christiania. Consider Kowloon Walled City. Or Slab City. Consider what these kinds of spaces add to the life of the city. And the new forms of relationships they enable. Do we try to demolish them? Try to incorporate them in some way? Regulate them? Leave them to be? Do we evict them? What are we losing when we lose these spaces? Could there not be some more enlightened form of governance at the level of the city that allows them to be, while also checking in? We don’t want another Ghost Ship (there’s a history of fires in places like these), but we don’t want a sanitized boring city, either. Squatter’s rights are important. As are, probably even more importantly, the ability to build Social Centers, the kind they have in Europe. After Occupy, a group of occupiers set up the Omni Commons, in Oakland; a permanent collective of collectives. Maybe this points the way, and maybe it also points the way for internet based/initiated movements to maintain a long-term presence?