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ROCKEFELLER PROJECT PROPOSAL
PROPOSED PROJECT: PERIPHERAL CITY
Red Dive and the Working Waterfront Association ("the producers"), under fiscal sponsorship from The Parks Council, are requesting ,000 from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Creativity and Culture Division for the development and production of PERIPHERAL CITY, a multi-media performance tour of South Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal taking place mid May to mid June 2002.
In Brief
The Working Waterfront Association (WWA), a coalition dedicated to environmentally sound uses of the greater New York harbor and waterways, and Red Dive, an award-winning collective of five independent artists that creates and produces site-specific, multi-sensory art events, are partnering to present the first touring art project that will explore the Gowanus Canal. While riding in a boat and traveling along the canal’s banks, PERIPHERAL CITY audiences will encounter a terrain transformed by music, dance, theatrical performance and visual and audio installations. The Gowanus Canal, a long-neglected estuary and relic of the decaying legacy of Brooklyn industry, is currently the focus of a growing number of development initiatives and revitalization efforts (see Park Slope Courier article insert). These plans range from gardens tended by grassroots alliances to business developments ranging from a multiplex to an IKEA mega store. Residents and local groups are expressing feelings ranging from anticipation of increased opportunities and amenities to fear of raising rents and ever-expanding gentrification (see New York Times article insert). The producers will work with the many communities invested in the Gowanus Canal to make PERIPHERAL CITY an artistic, community-based mechanism that reflects the diverse perspectives toward change and buffers potential partisanship and competition by providing a unique, common experience. PERIPHERAL CITY's participating artists, communities and audiences will celebrate the ephemeral nature of an important waterway in a transition between the worlds of neglect and development.
The Applicant Organization: The Working Waterfront Association
The Working Waterfront Association (WWA) was formed in 1997 as a response to the redevelopment of New York City’s waterfront over the past decade. Fiscally sponsored by the Parks Council, WWA offers educational programs and special events that highlight and raise awareness about water quality and access. Through a unique arts series, boating safety courses and water access programs, the WWA engages the New York City public in the political process surrounding environmental and water quality issues, from Hudson River Park to the Gowanus Canal.
The WWA has been deeply involved in many aspects of the planning process for the port region, from legislative text to infrastructure, design, and waterway safety issues. The WWA organizes arts and public events programs on the water that attract people who aren't typically interested in the waterfront to ultimately become more actively involved in water quality and environmental issues. In 1998, WWA, in partnership with the Hudson River Trust, produced a water festival which brought between 2-3000 people to the waterfront, provided them free boat rides and nine hours of dance with 25 choreographers and 200 dancers. The most recent WWA art project is The Tugboat Film and Video Series , a multi-year festival involving a floating cinema that utilizes maritime vessels and structures (boats, rafts, barges, and bridges) as a backdrop to be viewed by pedestrians along waterfront parks and esplanades throughout the Port of New York and New Jersey. WWA has collaborated on a range of projects and initiatives with a diverse group of organizations and agencies including: the City and State Parks Department, the Partnership for Parks, the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, Floating the Apple, The Gowanus Canal Community Corporation, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Harbor Operations Safety and Navigation Committee, Port Authority of NY/NJ NYC, The River Project, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the South Street Seaport Museum, New York-New Jersey Baykeeper, Arts on the Hudson, AMDAT Dance Technologies and Dancing in the Streets.
Project Partner: Red Dive
Red Dive was established in 1996 through an initiative from The Field funded by the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation. The Field’s program challenged independent artists to join forces and find innovative ways to address the needs of the artistic community. Red Dive’s founding artists responded by developing a new multi-media, multi-sensory art event format. Red Dive's signature format involves commissioning anywhere from five to 30 artists in various disciplines per event to collaboratively explore a central theme that relates to a site-specific setting. Red Dive directs the event and shapes the individual works of these artists to create a unified vision. Events take place in spaces outside of traditional theatrical and gallery settings, providing greater opportunities to reach audiences that span age groups and aesthetic sensibilities, as well as economic and ethnic backgrounds. Red Dive's commissioned artists are given a unique opportunity to shape an event in the early stages of its development and to create an independent project within a new structure. These artists, many of whom work in isolation, share their expertise as well as audiences with other artists, and benefit from a diverse pool of perspectives. Red Dive events merge a multiplicity of artistic voices into a seamless experience for audiences. Within its five-year history, Red Dive has created five projects that challenge artists and audiences to reconsider preconceived notions of what constitutes art and what its uses might be, including: ONE LESS SENSE (2000), a blindfolded tour in which 750 audience members, without benefit of sight, heard, touched or otherwise sensed the work of dancers, musicians, performers and installation artists; two events in partnership with The Lower East Side Tenement Museum - INHABITED: AFTERLIVES (1998), for which Red Dive received Dance Theater Workshop's first "Bessie" Award for Installation and New Media, and INHABITED: GHOSTS OF HOME (1997) - both performance-installation tours of The Tenement Museum that challenged artists to explore the history of the urban tenement experience; FOOD FOR THE SOUL (1997), an interactive dinner event hosted by cultural scholar Cornel West as part of The Foundry Theatre’s Hope Conference, in which Red Dive was commissioned by the Foundry Theatre with support from The Rockefeller Foundation to incorporate room and table design as well as sculptural representation of the event's theme of Hope to transform the dinner and panel discussion into a "performance of ideas;" and POOL (1996), a series of live music, dances and performances that responded to each other across a 200 cubic foot oil-changing pit that Red Dive artists converted into a freshwater bog. Red Dive has worked with over 125 artists and performers ranging in age from 15 to 79 - in disciplines as varied as architecture, video, dance, puppetry, food art, theater, music, sculpture and sound. Individual works have represented a wide range of ethnic and cultural experiences, including that of African-American, Hungarian, Asian-American, Latino, and Jewish artists. With each project, Red Dive has targeted a different community of artists and audiences in order to serve and reflect the diverse culture we live in. For example, with ONE LESS SENSE (2000), Red Dive conducted several consultations with members of the blind community, giving our development process a deeper understanding of sightless experience and introducing blind audiences to our work.
The Partnership
The Working Waterfront Association and Red Dive initiated their partnership through a series of conversations. Preliminary discussions focused on the unique nature of the Gowanus Canal and the communities that surround it, and progressed to in-depth conversations about the overlapping missions of WWA and Red Dive: WWA's determination to increase the accessibility of New York City waterways and Red Dive's commitment to increasing the availability of art work, and the focus of both organizations to bring art to unusual spaces and creating ways for art to fully inhabit a geographical area. WWA and Red Dive have a mutual desire to explore and transform the Gowanus Canal. Our responsibilities are divided to place emphasis on each organization's specific strengths, with many tasks and opportunities designed to be managed by both parties in order to allow each group and the individuals in it to broaden their talents and skill sets. WWA's principal responsibilities pertain to marine transportation, organization, and waterway safety while Red Dive's principal responsibilities pertain to artistic conceptualizing, planning and execution of the event, as well as event marketing and audience outreach. Matters of community outreach, research, documentation and evaluation will be shared by both organizational parties and WWA's Project Art Director will also sit on Red Dive's curatorial panel. Please see the Letter of Agreement for details.
History of Gowanus Canal
The Gowanus Canal stretches through South Brooklyn to the East River. The original Gowanus Creek was settled by the Dutch in the 1600s and named for Chief Gowanee, the leader of the local tribe of Canarsees. Built into a canal before the Civil War, the Gowanus supported printing plants, dye factories, oil-storage facilities, a fast-growing port and a community of working longshoremen, merchants and seamen. Waste from South Brooklyn drained into the canal, and the resulting noxious atmosphere inspired the installation of a flushing system to expel the waste into the New York harbor. The notorious Parks Commissioner Robert Moses divided South Brooklyn with a series of behemoth expressways that drove most major industry away from the canal. When the flushing system broke down in 1961, the canal was abandoned and left behind as another useless post-industrial dump. Since then over 80 businesses, assorted marine life and a handful of homeless people have made their home around the canal amid the abandoned buildings left over from the canal's industrial peak.
As a result of community activism, the waste flushing system was reinstalled in 1998. After 37 years of neglect, the canal is only now clean enough to welcome visitors. PERIPHERAL CITY will be the first multi-media touring event to take place within the canal itself, and will offer a snapshot of the multiple forces seeking a place along its history.
PERIPHERAL CITY: a response to the Gowanus Canal Community
PERIPHERAL CITY was conceived to artistically respond to the myriad and frequently conflicting concerns driving the Gowanus Canal's development efforts and to reintroduce the maligned canal to the larger public as a vital urban waterway. Through a rigorous process of investigating and integrating the voices of the Gowanus Canal community participants, PERIPHERAL CITY will reflect and contextualize their ideas to manifest and expand a collective vision for change. Not only will members of participating communities take part in the event's development process through a series of town meetings and workshops, they will act as tour guides and consultants as well as work alongside commissioned artists in the development of individual projects.
Participating Communities
The Dredgers: a grassroots volunteer association of 25 local environmentalists who run seasonal canoe and bike tours of the canal and are dedicated to cleaning the canal to promote marine life and recreational safety. At least 10 members of The Dredgers will work as tour planners and guides for PERIPHERAL CITY (see letter of support).
The Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation (GCCDC) – a non-profit neighborhood preservation group committed to the physical improvement and environmental remediations of the Gowanus Canal. The GCCDC Director will host one of PERIPHERAL CITY 's town meetings (see Project Development, below). PERIPHERAL CITY will accentuate the Dredger's and GCCDC's interest in bringing positive public attention to the canal. Other groups with a vested interest in the Gowanus Canal that the producers are establishing relationships with are: The Brooklyn Center for Urban Environment (BCUE), an organization that promotes the urbanization of environmental education and conducts educational tours of the Gowanus canal; The South Brooklyn Community Corporation (SBCC), a non-profit organization which works to keep businesses and jobs in the neighborhood and is supporting gardening efforts on dead end streets along the canal; The Brooklyn Historical Society, The Waterfront Museum and The Old Stone House, a landmark building blocks from the canal run by volunteers who offer an array of public programs that celebrate South Brooklyn’s history, Canal bridge operators whom Red Dive will solicit to participate, Employees of local businesses, and Area residents.
Participating Artists
Artistic diversity will be paramount to PERIPHERAL CITY. Red Dive's artist outreach will focus on emerging artists who are building careers in New York as well as Brooklyn-based community artists whose work is an extension of a particular community involvement. PERIPHERAL CITY artists will be selected based on criteria including artistic excellence and experience, ability to present work in a site-specific setting, technical competence, and enthusiasm to collaborate with community participants and other artists. All participating artists will be selected by January 15, 2002 (Calls for Proposals will be available October 1, 2001) by a curatorial panel led by Red Dive, including members of the WWA and at least two representatives from the Gowanus Community. Commissioned artists will have access to the producers' comprehensive research, community contacts and information as they begin envisioning their projects.
Emerging artists: Red Dive reaches out to emerging artists in two ways: by well-publicized, open calls for proposals and by soliciting work from artists with whom we are already familiar, either through their past involvement with Red Dive, the panel's knowledge of their current work, or by recommendation. Since its inception, Red Dive has been building a relationship with a growing network of diverse artists that has extended as far as the west coast and into Canada. Community artists Red Dive will work with the Brooklyn Arts Council and other community-based arts organizations such as the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) and Prospect Park Arts Alliance to target and solicit participation from local artists from a variety of communities in the Gowanus Canal area, ranging from teens from the BAX's Dance and Theater program to choral singers from Downtown Brooklyn's historic Baptist community.
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
Creating Dialogue - Town Meetings
The producers will publicize and facilitate a minimum of five town meetings and workshops that will invite a broad cross-section of the Gowanus Canal neighborhood, including local business owners, residents, development corporations, artists, and grass roots associations, to learn about each other and discuss their concerns, interests and ideas about the changing canal. Each meeting will be hosted by a different community organization. In turn, the producers will introduce PERIPHERAL CITY and invite attendees to take part either by being a member of a consultant pool or by becoming an event participant. Participation may involve anything from lending the use of property for performance sites to contributing to a work of art by acting as a performer or helping to build an installation.
From this dialogue, Red Dive will crystallize common interests and apply them to the artistic vision of PERIPHERAL CITY. Meetings will be held between early December 2001 through late January 2002 and will be publicized through e-mail lists from WWA, Red Dive and local community organizations, local newspapers and direct phone solicitation. We estimate reaching over 5,000 outreach recipients with this process.
Defining the Vision- Artists and Community Workshops
In February and March 2002, Red Dive will conduct two workshops for the commissioned artists and active community participants. The first workshop will serve as a sharing of ideas and resources between artists and community members. The second workshop will commence partnerships between artists and community members (creative teams) and define the vision of their individual project. This period also marks the larger collaboration and pre-production phase for PERIPHERAL CITY. The collaborative process facilitated by Red Dive will involve a series of canal visits, walking tours and a network of ongoing communication between creative teams, Red Dive's artistic and production team and the community consultant pool. During this process, Red Dive will direct the above to make PERIPHERAL CITY a unified vision. By mid April, all projects and tour design will be established.
Examples of the kinds of projects that will make up PERIPHERAL CITY:
· - projections on the side of a building of a series of photographs and drawings depicting the early settlements that existed on the same land years before;
· - a visit with a family eking out an existence in a camper near the water's edge;
· - a re-enactment of the opening of the Gowanus Canal flushing system, wherein a designated Miss Gowanus cast red carnations on the still waters of the canal;
· - performances that create the feeling of an accident or interruption of the tour, leaving audiences to question what elements of their surroundings are actually artifice;
· - an installation at a dead end street depicting an imagined utopian rest area combining the opportunity to recreate and appreciate the convergence of nature, residence and industry;
· - performances that re-imagine the land trades that have shaped the canal, from Dutch purchases from the Canarsees to projected development deals along the canal's banks;
· - dances that include the use of cranes, forklifts and other construction machinery alongside human dancers, in studies of scale, timing and the rhythmic properties of mechanized movement.
Audience Outreach
The producers predict 700 to 1000 people will attend PERIPHERAL CITY over three four-day weekends and an estimated additional 500 people will experience elements of PERIPHERAL CITY serendipitously as they walk or drive by while tours are taking place. 5000 potential audience members will receive our promotions through targeted mailings and extensive local marketing and outreach. The producers will target traditional art audiences and local residents from the neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Carroll Gardens and Downtown Brooklyn and work with our press representative for press notifications and reviews.
PERIPHERAL CITY: Tour Dates and Times
PERIPHERAL CITY tours will travel approximately 1 mile and take place at dusk from 6PM - 9PM with 2 - 4 tours of 30 to 50 audience members per night. Twilight will emphasize the Canal’s pending transition as well as illuminate overlooked points along the Canal’s banks where nature, residence and industry converge. Tours will run from Thursday through Sunday of each week for three weeks, from May 30 through June 16 of 2002, including the June 11th anniversary of the original opening of the canal's flushing system. The date is regularly marked with festivities sponsored by the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, with whom we will collaborate to create a celebration within PERIPHERAL CITY.
Evaluation and Assessment Plan
PERIPHERAL CITY will be evaluated as both an artistic event and as a community mechanism for reflecting the diverse perceptions toward the changing Gowanus Canal. From July to November of 2002, the producers will conduct an evaluation of the following aspects of PERIPHERAL CITY:
* audience number and diversity - to be estimated by survey;
* critical reviews and press response - to be compiled by the management team following the event;
* feedback from artists and participating community members - to be assessed by an in-depth survey and conversations with participants concerning their experience collaborating with participating artists, with Red Dive and the WWA;
* the producers - from reports required of each member of WWA and Red Dive working on PERIPHERAL CITY to be evaluated at the end of each of the four phases of the project, then read and assessed at PERIPHERAL CITY's completion. The final assessment will involve a public gathering to view the edited video documentation of PERIPHERAL CITY and an open discussion about how the event impacted the communities at large. This will take place in early November 2002.
Results: An ongoing observation of the Gowanus Canal
PERIPHERAL CITY will provide an ongoing compilation of the history, current status and future developments of the Gowanus Canal, both real and imagined, through the work of a commissioned web artist. Under the direction of Red Dive, this artist will mount a web site linked to the WWA site, the Red Dive's future site and other sites related to both the arts and the Gowanus Canal area. The compilation will take the form of a visual and sound collage that will include images, narratives and sounds from and relating to the canal. Visitors to the site will be invited to add their photographs, observations and visions for canal development. A linked bulletin board will hold ongoing discussions about the canal's future. Possible themes that can inform the site and its composition include anything from attitudes and relationships to progress to the nature and function of nostalgia in the individual's assessment of change. The producers will commission one artist to create, develop and maintain the PERIPHERAL CITY site.
Conclusion
PERIPHERAL CITY will be the first event of its kind. It is occurring at a pivotal point in the history of Brooklyn and re-introducing the maligned Gowanus Canal as a clean, vital estuary. PERIPHERAL CITY will offer audiences a singular opportunity to experience the canal in this transitional state before it is again altered by the hands of development. PERIPHERAL CITY also represents an exciting and necessary partnership - the alliance between an arts collective dedicated to moving art work out of traditional settings and into the community with an association whose mission it is to expand accessibility and provide new interpretations of and uses for New York City's waterways.
PERIPHERAL CITY is an opportunity to not only fuse the efforts of Red Dive, the Working Waterfront Association, myriad artists and community participants in a single event, but to create with them a common experience and shared perception of the present status of the Gowanus Canal. We hope the Rockefeller Foundation elects to support PERIPHERAL CITY and help write this unique artistic event into the history of Brooklyn.
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Budget for Red Dive's PERIPHERAL CITY 2002- In-Kind Personnel:,500 ,400
- Executive Producer 3,500
- Project Artistic Directors (2 @ ) 2,000
- Managing Director 1,000 1000
- Site Director 1,000
- Production Manager 1,000
- Waterway Transport Consultant 900 900
- Technical Director 1,000
- Fees for Artists (15 @ ) 12,000
- Fees for Guides and Boat Captains (10 @ ) 3,000
- Box Office 500 500
- Materials: $1,000 ,650>LI>Props and Materials 3,000 2000
- Costumes 500 500
- Box office supplies 150 150
- Equipment Rental ,900
- Lights 500
- Portable toilets 400
- Generators 500 500
- Boat rental 5,000
- Publicity,450
- 0outreach mailing 200
- press packets 150
- promotional printing 600
- promotional mailing 1,500
- documentation 1,250 750
- press representative 1,500
- Program printing 200 200
- Miscellaneous $1,650 /home/free/cgi-bin/util/sitebuilder
- Truck rental 150
- Insurance 1,500
- TOTAL PROJECTED BUDGET ,500
- TOTAL IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS secured ,500I
- NCOMEBox Office (approx. 70% capacity) * 9,000
- Jerome Foundation 8,000
- Greenwall Foundation 5,000
- Curtis W. McGraw Foundation 1,500
- Private Donations secured 5,000
- Heathcote Foundation 2,000
- Local Business Sponsorship 2,500
GUNK FOUNDATION requested ,000*Box office detailticket price: 14people/ tour: 20tours/ night: 4nights/week: 4weeks: 3total: 13,44070% of total: 9,408
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