Superfund Sites in China
Interesting future in China, as noted by Polis. There always seems to be a fascination among artists and designers to create art within and among ruin and decay. Perhaps it’s the capacity for artists to heal and reconnect things that are broken, recover things that are lost or disappearing, and bring new understanding to things that are fragmented, no longer intelligible. May it as well be for the capacity to solve problems and improve the world?This idea reminds me of a something that’s happening near me in St. Paul, MN. A new light rail corridor is currently breaking ground connecting the Minneapolis line to to a new St. Paul one. Local neighborhoods and businesses are concerned about how it will affect them. So the City of St. Paul along with Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Springboard for the Arts have launched a project called Irrigate, which will:
- mobilize and train artists in community development and creative placemaking, and
- activate hundreds of artist-led projects along the corridor that benefit businesses and neighborhoods
Perhaps not the same scale of deterioration as in industrial China, construction projects have a much smaller timeline and there isn’t the same disregard of land occurring. Pollution and environmental damage, on the other hand, affects people and place at a much deeper level. However, the work being engaged in St. Paul could become a working model for how small events can lead to greater works of art and an even greater world. Here I am also reminded of some threads I have been reading lately, where designers are taking the lead in complex projects because they are able to cut through all the messiness and make the connections by understanding the overall framework and structure of society, culture and the built environment (e.g. ELEMENTAL’s work in Chile) For more in depth reading see also Rory Hyde’s writing on unsolicited architecture, and potential futures for design practice . In this world and the way things are going, why shouldn’t the creative class take hold of the reins and chart new territories. We may as well have fun going down, or maybe perhaps even save this planet. If not the planet, then at least local communities and the people at the very bottom who suffer the most. It’s going to take a lot of work and creative will.
_Central Park, New York_
