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PRECEDENT #1:  KEY TO THE CITY, Paul Ramirez Jonas

By Beth Lundell Garver & Jenny Yi Yang

Individual site images are from  http://creativetime.org/projects/key-to-the-city/

Formal & Aesthetic / structure For the participant, Paul Ramirez Jonas' Key to the City public art project began in a gated, rectilinear, AstroTurfed space in Times Square called "the commons" where one signed a communal ledger (for posterity), and customized a scripted pledge to read out loud during a "Bestow the Key" ceremony.  As part of the ceremony, the participant was given a key and a guidebook with information on sites throughout the five boroughs of New York City that the key would (and still does) unlock.  The ceremonial experience was a formal one, almost as if it were a quick wedding, wherein the artist, Paul Ramirez Jones, uses the key “as a vehicle for exploring social contracts as they pertain to trust, access, and belonging” within the context of the city’s public realm.  The guidebook looked like a passport and was composed as if it were a marketing catalogue of sights for the urban curious, promising more authenticity than any Frommer’s guide could.  The target audience ranged from those conveniently lured in by their pre-existence in Times Square to urbanists and creativity pioneers that learned of the project and intentionally sought participation.            Technical / structure The Key to the City website is simple and user-friendly.  On the home page, the viewer can watch a short video of the artist and a friend performing the “Bestow the Key” ceremony.  The homepage header has categories that include: About (The Project, The Artist, Press), Keys and Locks (Bestow a Key, Open a Lock, Copy you Key), Participate (iPhone App, Share, Volunteer), and Thanks (Partners & Advisors, Supporters).  The Press category includes links to press coverage of the project, offering ways to learn more about the project, its impact and feedback from participants.  There is also a Twitter feed (#keytothecity), but it does not appear to relate directly to the Key to the City project, and an adjacent Flickr photo loop of images from “Open a Lock” sites throughout NYC.  The Flickr group pool currently has 2,164 photos, 604 of which are from the top five contributors, evidencing a meager level of participation in the project given it’s production run was for 25,000 keys to be distributed to thousands of New Yorkers and tourists over three weeks in June 2010.    

Cultural / Political As New York Mayor Bloomberg, who normally awards the ceremonial key to distinguished heroes and esteemed visitors and received the first key from the artist, said, noting how the project “celebrates those interactions by helping bring a tradition typically reserved for special occasions to our everyday lives. The keys….will provide New Yorkers with a new way to experience some of our cultural organizations, city landmarks and small businesses.” In a video Jonas discussing the key, he states "you have to give something to get something from the artwork." This is similar to what Mariana Abramovich said in her lecture in GSD, “You give me your time, I give you the experience.” In Key to the City project, the physical journey to the locked site and the experience there offers the participants something that virtual text, image or documentation would hardly provide. It is more likely to be mentally touched by physically touching. One participant, Lauren Burke, used her key to set up blind dates at each location and blog about it. Each journey she would take a new date. She started from Bryan Park in Manhattan on June 13 and ended the last “unlock” journey alone on September 12, 2010. Here is a quote from her blog when she had finished all the 24 sites and returned to the first site where she began, which vividly described the project’s influence on her:

“Walking to Bryant Park I noted every person walking by and tried to guess the impact they could play on my life. I took stock of every door and wondered what may lay behind its threshold. I've always been on the lookout for extraordinary moments in everyday life, a leaf imprinted in concrete or the way a child wraps her hand around her mother's pinkie finger, but after key to the city every door front has the ability to bring you to a new world, every person the possibility to make a connection. Even if it’s just empty beer cans and dead fish, a split second romance on a subway platform or a three week love affair. It’s about living, truly living, every moment of your life, noticing the small details, getting lost in the treasures of opportunity and risk, that makes our lives, our loves, and ourselves, all the more interesting to be a part of. I’d never be a passive observer in my own life again.”

It is not released that how many keys were eventually distributed at the end of the project. It seems that they were quite optimistic about the project and the enthusiasm of audience, for there are provided addresses to copy the keys on the project homepage. Maybe they did not manage to bestow all the keys as expected. As the flickr indicates, there were not as many as participants as the 25,000 keys can cover. Whatever the reason, less recognition and participation limits the influence the project could make to the public.

“Smart people are cheap; you can buy a dozen of them with 10 cents. What is important is to influence the others.” (Jeff Ullman) For artists and designers, the situation is similar. In a time overflowed by media, design and art being ubiquitous, both good and bad, maybe it is not hard to be different, but to effectively make a difference.

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PRECEDENT #2:  GHOST BIKES, started by Patrick Van Der Tuin in St. Louis, MO, 2003

By Beth Lundell Garver 

Individual photographs by Christopher Griffith for New York Magazine

Like the Key to the City project, ghost bikes exist within the physical and digital realm.  However, despite its simplicity, the Ghost Bikes project is more multifaceted and impacts an increasingly diverse public.  Ghostbikes.org was conceived as a memorial and awareness platform for use by the world-wide bicycle community to poignantly record deaths caused by collisions between cyclists and vehicles.  Take Shamar Porter, a ten-year-old on his way home after a Little League playoff victory who was hit by a minivan after departing the field near Linden Boulevard and Williams Street in Brooklyn, New York.  The location of Porter’s death was marked by a ghost bike, which comprised of: 1) a free “junk” bike spray painted white and stripped to its basic wheels and frame, 2) a plaque made of laminated laser paper, screen-printed metal, or a variety of other materials, and 3) a chain and lock which fastened the ghost bike to an ordinary street sign.  The result stands as a striking memorial to Porter’s friends and loved ones, a symbol of unified sadness for New York’s cycling community, and a daily plea for awareness and caution from those driving and walking past the ghost bike.  Formally, the ghost bike’s silhouette slices into the hustling background of urban terrain, as if a cut-out of a paper magazine advertisement or canvas Edward Hopper painting.  It is physically real, while simultaneously at varying scales for the passerby, it evokes an imagined vision of each victim’s life and death.    In tandem with these physical installations, ghostbikes.org serves an online database of participating cities, maps of ghost bike locations within each city, and upcoming events such as the “Ride of Silence” or the “14th Annual Blessing of the Bikes”.  The website has only one photograph which shows on every web page.  It is of one reflective white ghost bike surrounded by a dark black night sprinkled with lines of vehicular lights in motion in the background.  Beside the ghost bike on the sidewalk, there is a ubiquitous plastic cup, potentially set down briefly so the viewer might take a picture with their smartphone and share it with the world.  

The project is overtly alluring, yet inoffensive, as it blurs makeshift memorials with common public street activity.  It evokes a duality of past and present - the tragic accident of the past coupled with present heartache of loved ones and heightened awareness of passersby.  For interesting perspectives on death, death culture, and the relevancy of cemeteries as public platforms for past, present, and future storytelling, blogs like deathreferencedesk.org, dailyundertaker.com, and John Troyer’s The Future Cemetery project all comply.  However, I focused on ghostbikes.org because I feel the project has reached greater finality than the afformentioned blogs.  Ghostbikes.org’s impact, as an increasingly popular trend, makes it particularly useful for the purpose of this precedent analysis.       

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  PRECEDENT #3:  Before I Die, started by Candy Chang. New Orleans, LA, 2011-ongoing

By Jenny Yi Yang

Photographs and information credit to Civic Center http://beforeidie.cc/ http://civiccenter.cc/the-before-i-die-toolkit/ Before I Die is a global public art project that invites people to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in public space. Originally created by Candy on an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans after she lost someone she loved, the project is about remembering what is important to you and creating public spaces that help us see we are not alone in our struggles towards leading personally meaningful lives. Formal / Aesthetic Before I Die is a global public art project that invites people to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in public space. Originally created by Candy on an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans after she lost someone she loved, the project is about remembering what is important to you and creating public spaces that help us see we are not alone in our struggles towards leading personally meaningful lives. This project is painted on the side of an abandoned house in my neighborhood in New Orleans with chalkboard paint and stenciled it with a grid of the sentence “Before I die I want to _______.” Anyone walking by could pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their lives, and share their personal aspirations in public space. Socio / Technical The blackboard to write on is made by Chang and her friends. Responses written by the public in the blanks finish the rest of the work. The community responded on the blackboard passionately. After receiving many requests, Chang’s team created a Before I Die toolkit and the project site beforeidie.cc to help people make a wall with their community. Each kit includes a large 39″ x 50″ stencil with a full column of the fill-in-the-blank sentence, “Before I die I want to _______.” The stencil is manufactured from extra thick 10 mm mylar. This means it easily hangs flat and rigid so you can spray-paint with minimal tape and time. Thinner stencils will buckle because of all the horizontal lines. The kit also includes a 10′ long paper headline stencil, metal chalk holders, two boxes of multicolored chalk, vinyl gloves, and a comprehensive how-to guide. You can purchase the kit from the kit website. On the website, free download of all the files needed to build your own “Before I die” wall is also provided.  Handy and user-friendly, the project has been replicated around the world.

Cultural / Political The press highly praises the project. “Before I Die is merely one of the most creative community projects ever”. “Good urban design doesn’t just help people engage with their cities; according to artist and designer Candy Chang, it also helps people engage with each other… Chang creates public spaces that spark conversation and reflect a sense of community identity—often using little more than chalk, stickers, and some creativity.”(The Atlantic) “Young or old, rich or poor, the [Before I Die] wall does make you think as you walk by.” (NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams) “Suddenly, connecting the personal and the public in meaningful ways doesn’t seem so idealistic and trope.” (CBS) Candy Chang has also been invited to TED to lecture on the project. The project stops people and provokes thinking of life and value among them, and creates awareness of each other among community members.

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