Meantime, Meanspace, Meanculture
dal 19/1/2001 al 30/3/2001
Segnalato da
19/1/2001
Meantime, Meanspace, Meanculture
Locust Projects, Miami
Stalker arrived to Miami as transient inhabitants in search of a public place, but all we found were thousands of square blocks with far fewer places to meet. We found ourselves literally turning in circles in our attempt to find where the city’s public life intersected. The Miami River struck us as the right place for such a spot, since it is the only site that resists domination of the square block. The rigid grid of the square blocks is penetrated by the river, but much less by the passage of people.
Stalker in Miami
fromTransient inhabitant to dominoMiami
03 - 20 - 2000 / 04 - 01 - 2000
01 - 19 / 3 - 30 - 2001 opening at Locust Projects
Webster’s dictionary definition: 4.mean: 1. Occupying a middle position;
intermediate in space, order, time, kind or degree. 2. Occupying a position
about midway between extremes.
Stalker arrived to Miami as transient inhabitants in search of a public place,
but all we found were thousands of square blocks with far fewer places to meet.
We found ourselves literally turning in circles in our attempt to find where the
city’s public life intersected.
The Miami River struck us as the right place for such a spot, since it is the
only site that resists domination of the square block. The rigid grid of the
square blocks is penetrated by the river, but much less by the passage of
people.
The Miami River is known mostly as the place where Miami’s inhabitants spend
considerable time everyday sitting in their cars waiting for the drawbridges to
open for ships to pass. The River is also the place that divides the city
culturally, with, for instance, Little Havana on one side and Overtown on the
other. These divisions reflect what the River signifies today: a "meantime" and
a "meanspace", dividing cultures just like a border.
Today, borders like this are taking up more and more of our time and space. We
believe that in a maturing multicultural and semi-nomadic society, those borders
will become the most important public spaces. They will be places where
differences face each other and start to relate to each other, places that are
now considered a waste of time can become spaces for pleasure and interaction.
Public spaces for a "meanculture".
This is what we consider to be the big opportunity for the Miami River.
Meanspace, walking in circles on the Miami River
03 - 21 - 2000 The first Stalker intervention attempted to walk along the River
banks. It turned into a ritual of walking in circles.
Meantime, Free Bridge Coffee
03 - 30 - 2000 from 10.00:am at Flagler Bridge Miami - a Stalker production of
public time.
Meanculture, driving about the poem
O3 - 28 - 2000 transcultural ‘eat and drive’ from Everglades to Little Haiti
with Adrian Castro following his poem
"When She Carried a Calabash"
for Katherine Dunham
by Adrian Castro
DominoMiami
01 - 19 / 3 - 30 - 2001 opening at Locust Projects 8 pm
a Stalker urban game
We propose that the Miami River become an experimental public space. A place
where uses are mutable and not defined, occasions of meeting and exchange, a
place where people can change their ways after meeting with others, a place
where, by chance just like in a game, the city evolves.
DominoMiami is an open game to play all the possible combinations of spaces and
people along the Miami river.
"My thesis is that the world is creolizing, that is the cultures of the world,
put in contact together in simultaneous and absolutely conscious ways, are
changing (...).
The diversity extends itself thanks to all the unexpected apparitions,
minorities only yesterday unsuspectingly and crushed from the head of a
monolithic thought, fractal manifestations of sensibility that transform
themselves and assemble in unedited manner. (...)
All the possible combinations and all the contradictions are inscribed in the
diversity of the world."
(Eduard Glissant. Introduction à une poetique duf divers. Paris, 1996)
Dedicata a Irene che e` appena nata
http://www.locustprojects.com