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Words, Images, and Spaces
4'45/ 2002
Project directed by Kyong Park
In the summer of 2002, a group of artists and architects, from Detroit and New York, installed a series of works in the Near Eastside of Detroit. 18 words were placed on vacant lots, and a new floor was built with 1,500 linear feet of woods scavenged from demolished houses. As an alternative to the large and corporate redevelopment of the city, these temporary work respect and celebrate the ways in which the communities develop cities, smaller in scale and more personal ways. They also illustrate the tenuous moment for the Near Eastside, facing its gentrification and displacement, after half century of destruction and isolation. Could a new city be borne out of these words, images and spaces?
The WORDS chosen for this installation were spread throughout the neighborhood ; a hidden vocabulary to reflect people’s desires for a better city. The sites were selected according to each particular word, through a process of consecutive associations. The installation was an opportunity to interact with neighbors and to find out about their perception of ongoing urban change.
In a city that lost one million people and demolished more than 200,000 houses, the landscape is a void , with huge spaces of abandonment that accept the return of nature; a green city by default. IMAGES on a series of billboards recall nature and suggest that a new ecology could be developed on the empty territory.
Transforming a new SPACE utilizing the remains of a destroyed city. Collecting and refurbishing old woods from demolished houses, accepting their irregularities and variations . They were later cleaned and reshaped to make a new floor in the exhibition at the art gallery 4731 in Detroit.
