As part of the ongoing campus initiative Global Urban Humanities: Engaging the Humanities and Environmental Design, the Arts Research Center co-sponsored the Reimagining the Urban: Bay Area Connections Across the Arts and Public Space on September 30, 2013. Participants have been asked to submit a blog post "on a keyword you see debated in the Bay Area arts, policy, and planning landscape." This posting is by Leslie Dreyer, a first year MFA student in Art Practice.
Keyword: (In)equity, Inevitable?
Dr. Shannon Jackson, who co-organized Reimagining the Urban, opened
the symposium with questions including, in summary: What kinds of
creativity are valued and for whom? And how can collaborating across
sectors create solutions rather than obstacles? Another question to ask
here would be: solutions for whom? Margaret Crawford, who blogged
about Richard Florida’s theory and Creative Class policies “pushing up
rents and displacing local businesses and residents,” restated Jackson’s
questions by mentioning San Francisco’s “success” alongside the
displacement of long-time local and influential artists. I was curious
how the panelists would address questions of equity and access in their
strategies of “reimagining.”
Session I seemed focused on creative business models for arts
organizations and survival under neoliberalism, especially in the new
tech boom. Andy Yang of Forest City described the 5M project, which is a
4-acre mixed use network of buildings and organizations, all of which
Florida would categorize as belonging to the “creative class.” He
mentioned new enterprise opportunities emerging from 5M, including a
“homeless to hacker” success story, which showed what is possible but
perhaps not probable for the majority of the surrounding disenfranchised
community. He also acknowledged the low rate of community attendance
during Grey Area Foundation’s (backed by 5M) Urban Prototyping Festival.
I started to wonder how the arts orgs involved in the symposium
interpreted “serving the community” and “community-based” art. Do they
serve those fortunate enough to afford market-rate rent, those with a
longer history of residency that are facing displacement, both?
Deborah Cullinan, executive director of Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts, emphasized wanting a “place at the table” and parity between the
“indigenous” community (using a potentially controversial definition
meaning long-time residents), arts organizations and developers, though
she didn’t explain how this parity would be achieved. She said that
“instead of standing on the sidelines in protest” they were going to
“throw [themselves] into the change and make it better.” Unfortunately
there wasn’t enough time for me to ask the questions: 1) Better for
whom? 2) Instead of standing on the sidelines in protest, can’t we stand
on top of the “table” (the one at which arts non-profits hope to sit
alongside city reps, tech industry reps and developers) and not accept
the change, specifically the displacement of long-time locals, as
inevitable? 3) Who is not at the table, and is sitting there with
“unlikely allies”[i] an act of survival of the fittest or solidarity for those who aren’t invited?
In Session II the speakers described technology-driven urban arts
projects while avoiding the equity question. The projects were
“accessible” meaning one didn’t have to be tech savvy to use or
understand them. Some of them appropriated vast amounts of user data
prompting Dr. Teresa Caldeira to ask how technologies that collect such
data is being / could be used in this era of expanding surveillance.
Joel Slayton of Zero 1 responded that it was inevitable that it would be
used to surveil the public but that the arts could be a “cultural
watchdog,” which seemed to elude tech developers’ role in public
surveillance and privacy infringement.
Why were increasing inequity and surveillance imagined to be
“inevitable” by many in this symposium, and what would it take to move
participants to reimagine that they’re not? Is our only hope as artists
or arts orgs to become “radical parasites,” a phrase mentioned by
panelist Raquel Gutierrez, feeding off the tech industry for money and
disenfranchised communities for content and perhaps more grant money (or
is she using the phrase in more of a Robin Hood sense: feeding off tech
to give to the poor)? I don’t have quick and easy answers as to how to
achieve equity in a city with such high rates of evictions, economic
inequality and unaffordable housing, but I know the policy changes that
we need to stem the tide of gentrification and class-warfare, starting
with mid-market as ground zero, require the sheer force of the masses.
Will non-profits play a role in muting dissent, a critique posed in
INCITE!’s book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-profit Industrial Complex?
Will they leverage their “place at the table” to inspire support for
policies that help keep the disenfranchised in their homes and in the
community arts programs designed for them? In what ways can artists
reimagine the urban that makes equity inevitable?
[i] A term used numerous times in Session I of the symposium
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