Roberts

Boston, a city
known for tight quarters and high rents, is facing perhaps its worst housing
crisis yet. Repeals of rent control, market forces, and avarice have allowed
landlords to yank up rents inordinately, leaving low and medium-income tenants
insecure, poorer, and often homeless. But as opposed to the years when rent
control was on the ballot, housing issues seem to be glossed over in the
political discourse in Boston these days. It’s as if the moguls in charge are
just glad that their homes have tripled in value.

    But where
politicians and journalists fear to tread, artists often jump in. Political
artists John Ewing and Liz Canner developed an intricate, interactive video
art project focusing on housing and community activism. Symphony of A City,
which premiered in April, at once challenged and celebrated the city of
Boston.

Part of the
public art movement that seeks to relocate art from museums into everyday
public arenas, Canner is known for her documentaries such as Deadly Embace:
Nicaragua, the World Bank and the IMF and State of Emergency,
spotlighting police brutality. Ewing is primarily a political muralist,
working with disenfranchised communities throughout the U.S. and Latin
America.

In their
multifaceted piece Symphony of A City, they placed tiny cameras on the
heads of four Bostonians from different walks of life and projected the
footage simultaneously onto Boston City Hall and onto the web, at
Symphonyofacity.org. It’s like Being John Malkovich, except that
instead of one life, you become spy/voyeur/guest in four lives simultaneously.
These lives are as diverse and interesting as the city around you, commenting
on social issues from divergent points of view.

Eight “wearcam”
operators (four on each of two days) started in the morning wired with audio
and video and viewers took a ride through their entire day seeing everything
from their perspective: their activities, their families, their challenges,
focusing on issues of housing and community activism.

Audio speakers
around Boston City Hall allowed spectators to listen to a jumble of four
coexisting lives or to walk close to just one speaker and focus on that
individual’s experience. But as the viewer learned what was happening to that
particular Bostonian at the moment, they were also simultaneously aware of
passing events in the lives of the other three. The atmosphere at the premiere
April 27 was a cross between free outside movie, forum for political debate,
and urban picnic. Wearcam operators mingled with artists and the public,
including tourists and locals, those who sought out the show and those who
stumbled upon it.

The wearcam
operators were nominated by various community groups, such as the Asian
Community Development Corporation and City Life/Vida Urbana, and addressed
housing or activism in some way. For instance, cameras were worn by and showed
the lives of a tenant facing eviction, a tenants’ lawyer, a wealthy landlord,
and a homeless person. The identity of each wearcam operator, including their
class, race and gender, only became apparent as the viewer watched.

At once there
was a democratizing element in the representation of those who are struggling
economically, who are often made invisible in our society, and also a jarring
comparison of those lives with privileged others, who are disproportionately
powerful in our world.

    The result
was not only interesting from a purely political standpoint, it also
challenged traditional concepts of artist as “the maker” versus art as “that
which is made.” Canner and Ewing provided wear-cam operators with technical
training, but the wear- cam operators decided what to portray and how. Some
showed a carefully planned sequence of activities or interviewed friends about
housing issues, others went about their day as if the camera weren’t present.

Much of the
interest of Symphony of A City emanated from its unpredictability and
the questions it raised: What can seeing life from another’s perspective teach
us about the city around us? Is the realism of an “average” person’s day art?
Given that the images of city life and social justice issues are projected
onto two archetypal symbols of civic dialogue—the age-old city hall, and the
techno-modern Internet—is it the process which decides that the thing is art
or rather the achieved aesthetic?

On the days
Symphony of A City premiered, the project’s website was interactive and
enabled viewers to choose which realtime streaming video to watch, or perhaps
to watch several simultaneously. The viewer could then use the site to access
more information about these issues, to participate in an online dialogue with
other viewers and ask questions of the camera operators, to read about them
and the neighborhoods they come from, and ways to become involved in local
progressive politics.

The artists
plan to continue the website until spring 2002, including edited 10-minute
segments of the wearcam operators’ lives.    Z