a story about staying and going
handwritten words in a variety of media on light brown paper circle around a drawing of a fire spelling out Iowa Art & M(aking) A(rt) T(hings) H(appen).
the drawing is entitled: three people, two hours, one afternoon: drawing subjective Iowa art and MATH, in hopes of conveying the subjectivity of the content and encouraging others to build their own connections and bubble maps related to people, place, and art(s) work.
This is a transcription of a story they [John Engelbrecht] sometimes tell.
I am going to start writing this or speaking this actually because there is a story that I like to tell and do so often and I'm doing this speech to text for you so please dismiss any lack of punctuation or the run-on sentences feel as it’s not so much an anti-grammatical choice but one that is born out of this conversational tone as this is the tone I normally use for this story one about art, community space, and how that space is maintained over time
We the PS1 staff of 2 at the time went on the Roberts Street residency in Halifax Nova Scotia in 2014 we arrived and were picked up at the airport by one of the collective members affiliated with the Halifax artist groups Sad Rad and Inkstorm and just when we were there combining to form Radstorm and the Anchor Archive zine library which was in the back of a funky secondhand/artifacts store called Plan B
The story that I like to think about and tell is this: one of these Roberts St organizers slash art friends that we met on day one who gave us the key to our temporary apt while removing a joint from under his cap was a person named S we’d end up talking a lot to him over the next 10 days as he was one of our point people and in talking with him we talked about the art community in Halifax on that northeast end and I guess I should go back and say that we were there as artists in residence as part of an organizational residency meaning we were there to focus on what it meant to be part of a DIY/DIT organizing arts group in in the world and so our whole proposal and plan was to meet with all their team and sit in on meetings and just soak up anything they had to offer about how they organize so we could think about that for for ourselves and for PS1 back in Iowa so anyway we met S that first night and he invited us to hang out with him play cards and smoke some cannabis
sidenote while listening to Hall and Oates and we got to talking about things and someone made this point about being in a transient place like they saw Halifax a place where S was from but no less a place where people are coming through all the time because it's sort of the end of the line for touring bands in Canada people are coming and going so it's transitory place much like Iowa City and he said for him the important thing about the art and punk community was that his people and tho we just met we were indeed his people knew that when they came to Halifax they knew that he was gonna be in Halifax S was gonna be there that that's where he was there was nowhere else he was aiming towards he was going to be holding down whatever small bit of ground he had there on Roberts St or around that north end of Halifax
and that resonated with me and has been something that I've thought about a lot in the eight years since visiting I think about it in regards to what it means to stay in a place to so strongly identify yourself in that place even if that place is like Iowa City where a significant chunk of the population and artist population are coming and going every three or 4 years what does it enable to make your home in a such a transitory and experimental place a place where there's not a vernacular or common everyday knowledge of the history of people who were here or the things they did here a short term memory kind of place
So when I reflect on my own work in the work that we do at PS1 it's always with this idea that all the artists that we know and that we are working with here are usually on their way somewhere else yeah its cool for the ones who have made this their home for however long but to be here is to always lose art people and friends every year but this idea that I kept from S that I have brought back to public space one and our work here is that this should be a place that holds this transitory history of the community to some extent that if only through us and the stories we transmit the place where no matter where things took you you know that there would be this community here of artists via us and via PS1 and this is what I learned and got from S during that Robert Streets residency and is a thing I think of when I think of PS1 and the work we do so much is about being here and not feeling like there is somewhere else we should be
Now the ironic and funny part of the story I relayed this to sentiment to S over email a couple years ago that what he had said and this stance he took of representing his hometown really had stuck with me years after that visit and he let me know that he has since moved to the opposite side of Canada the he is now to be found as a skateboarder on the streets of Vancouver
Which is all to say What we are proposing for this introduction into the Iowa Atlas on these Thursdays for the next two months is a subjective history of this place see our image map below that we are calling thank god we are nowhere near the center of the art world or art + MATH (Making Art Things Happen) or can or you can count on us here in Iowa question mark
John Englebrecht, Kalmia Strong, and Jeremy Chen are the June Editors for Iowa. They are a part of Public Space One.
