         
Emily Egan Assessment“There is a sense of the fragility of the achievement of the culture industry or the dominating apparatus. After all, just as it was put there, it can also be dismantled or evaded or used to different purposes. There’s nothing inevitable or even necessary about it; it’s there, it can be taken apart.” -Edward SaidI really enjoyed the discussion we had on Friday. The comments that were made about the class enabling us to engage with the ‘real world’ better were very true, and they resonated with some of my thoughts I had earlier in the semester. I was struggling with this class a lot because I did not feel like I was doing what I supposed to be doing yet, I didn’t know what it was we were supposed to do either. There were no specific assignments that I could work on and have completed at a certain deadline. There was not a project to be done in groups with the work delegated out according to who was best at each of the particular tasks. It was as if the lack of directions created chaos in my mind that, looking back on it, was a really good experience unique to the university setting. I wish that I could say I know exactly what happened in civic studio and I know exactly what I contributed and gained what from it. What follows is an attempt to understand these things and reflect on the experience itself. The most concrete and comprehensible things for me in this class were the discussions, and readings. I know that others mentioned they did not gain a lot from the readings but I learned a lot from them. Some I liked better than others but all were readings that were much different than any of my other in-class readings. Though some of the things were theoretical, even philosophical, they were very strongly based on actual life and what matters and affects it. I will enjoy having the information and concepts that I’ve gained inform how I think about and relate future ideas and readings. The discussions we had about them were great, but I don’t think that there was enough time allowed for an in depth conversation. I would have also liked more time for group discussions to flow and wander, to see where they could have gone. With so many people in the class it is difficult for there to be a level of comfort and space for everyone. However, the best discussions that were had were the informal ones that happened in little or bigger groups. I think that the lunchtime was a great time to be social and discuss things deeply or not. I remember one conversation at lunch during one of the first civic studio classes, that was so amazing. We just probed everyone’s mind and asked ourselves some of the deepest questions, which we thought about it sincerely. Likewise the conversations that I had with individuals in the group were just as beneficial for helping me understand the class and the concepts it dealt with. On the other end of the spectrum, there were the studio projects that we dealt with. If I felt like I understood anything before, I definitely struggled with the studio in the beginning. Maybe this is because I’m not an art major and I don’t the experience of working with any particular goo. I spent some time drawing the studio and I took a lot of blurry pictures. I’m thankful for everyone who tried to help me out with these things, especially Jules who showed me this thing called photoshop. I often found myself being drawn to the studio and the neighborhood. I wanted to just check up on it and see how it was evolving. Sometimes I would set up displays or move things around to see how it would change or stay the same. Somehow, all of the things I found in or by the space were a little magical, as if they were meant to be there and they were waiting to be discovered. Even Barbie doll legs or broken hair clips were special and deserved to be placed somewhere with care. I enjoyed doing the formal kind of studio work, such as drawing or painting but eventually I realized that anything I did with these things would just look a little under developed and that I could benefit the studio in other ways. Being in the space and just doing whatever needed to be done or rearranging it so that it felt a little bit cozier was time that I felt was my most effective studio time. I am a little disheartened by one of the specific studio project that we had. Researching the history of places in Creston turned out to be one of the most difficult things to do. I choose to do the War monument at the “crotch” of Creston. I wanted to do this because I think it is a great example of war monuments before the Vietnam war memorial changed the aesthetic of how we honor tragic history. The monument is placed almost awkwardly on the streets because it appears as though the brick road was going to have more traffic. The benches don’t look out into the street, they are placed facing buildings. The reason I think that it interesting is because it is such a evokes a feeling of pride in it’s tall, white stance. Many war monuments are phallic structures that supports the country or the ideals of the war and offers no space for the individual to mourn and reflect. I have always watched how the citizens engage with the space around the monument and a couple of times I got really excited when I saw a bunch of people milling around by it. Then I realized that it’s mostly a place where people wait for the bus, which is nice that they have an area with seating to do that but it really doesn’t maximize the potentials of a public gathering space. The reason that this was so difficult is because I really could not find any information on the monument. The public library had tons of information on other monuments but absolutely nothing about this one, maybe I should have picked another item. Luckily, I found some pictures of the space that were really old and kind of interesting. The pictures allowed the imagination to see the space as how it was and what it must have felt like at that time. I put some of these up on the wall in the space. I was going to put them all into an antique photograph book that could be placed in Kate’s history room, but during the transition they all got lost. (So, I hope someone finds them because they’re pretty neat.) The history projects as well as the community service projects really strongly influenced our understanding and sense of connection to Creston. The community service hours were very informative, even if it was rather ineffective. I really volunteer at the Creston high school because on our first derive I walked around there and was intrigued by the building. The other things that Paul had learned about what sort of rooms and things they’ve had there was also interesting. The building is so big that it is captivating. I started calling the school to get ask how I could do my volunteering and getting the information about that to me took a while. As it turned out, I had to go through a training and a background check first, which seemed a little odd to me. It’s frustrating that there is so much bureaucracy for those sorts of things because often times good intentions can be drained by it. I also think that it’s a weird double standard that the public schools have the elementary schools do not have such requirements. The training I went though was kind of depressing because it informed me about the unfortunate family lives and the difficult economic situations that many of the students at Creston are in. It was an hour in a half long session with just me and four other ladies talking about Creston with a project screen full of unsettling information. I went to Creston to volunteer actually only once. I called the lady (her name is escaping me right now I think it was Katherine) and told her I was interested in volunteering but never got a call back. So, when I showed up to volunteer it took them a while to understand what I was there for and if it was o.k. I enjoyed watching some kids played basketball though. Then I realized that I did not want to go to the school and volunteer to work with these students if I was only going to do it for 4 maybe 5 times. I was hesitant to work with students who are supposed to see me as a role model and someone whom they can depend on and then never see them again. So, I called the union label coalition, which is the building with the parking lot where many of us park our cars, and asked if I could help out. I’ve volunteered with them before because of the Grand Valley Student organization that I’m in, Students Against Sweatshops. They like to have students come to their meetings so I went and we discussed some projects that they are working on and how I/our student organization can help them. Jenny Chatman is out of town right now but I plan on volunteering with her one more time when she gets back. I will be filling in some information in their database, in order to get in my full eight hours. I talked a little bit about the class with everyone that I encountered during my volunteering. The conversations were always pleasant because the other people were pleased that we wanted to work in the community and/or build community, but I have a sense that they did not understand the class on a deeper level, the one we would want them to. I have a sense that they are thinking, “oh, how nice, that’s a cute little art project”. When we are, or at least I am, thinking “This is monumental, this is how we can change things!!” I really enjoyed interacting with people within the context of this class. The ability to have a set of ideas like the ones in this class and talk to strangers about it provided a lot of insight. I think that I was able to talk to people both in and out of this class in a way that contributed to its formulation. Having Mitch and Mark visit was great fun and also very rewarding. See how they live and work with some of the ideas and issues in civic studio in a very developed, deliberate is inspiring. Being able to talk to them and get to know them a little more after their presentation was lovely. People in the class were very creative and I loved to feed off that while helping in any way that I could. Mostly by helping people write out what they wanted to talk about I contributed to the projects. By being in multiple “committees” I could make sure that everyone stayed on the same page and things got followed through. Other things that I helped out with were the simple tasks of producing the space we wanted. Moving things around, doing the lighting or helping with the wall and bathroom creation are a couple of examples of this. I thought about the class and the topics this class revolves around frequently. As the quote at the top of this indicates, I could see relevance and connections between this class, all the others, and my life. Being in this class gave me a new understanding of public space and how we experience it visually. Hannah Arendt believed that the real definition of a totalitarian state is a state where we are enslaved to our private lives; where we do not have the freedom to be in public, in public spaces. Space continually comes to mind and it seems silly that more people don’t see the connection between how the visual presentation of public space effects what takes place there. I think that many people have seen the connections between an aesthetically pleasing environment and one that is not by looking at the inequity in public schools and how they are painted and kept up. This is just scratching the surface of the layers and layers of ways art effects us. In my senior thesis we had to write about our methodology, and because I am in liberal studies our methodology has to be interdisciplinary. Many people did a sociological/philosophical approach to their research and their paper and I did an artistic/philosophical one. I did this because I think that there are so many ways of acquiring information that artists have that others are ignoring. Being in this class helped me to realize this. I partly struggled in this class because I did not understand the methodology of artists. So often I wanted to have one concept that could embody the whole nature of the class and also make a point while leaving room for the imagination. I was too focused on the concepts. Many of the things that developed for the final project happened naturally and came together organically. I learned at some point in the class that if you want to push a project too far in one direction you lose a lot of creativity. More importantly I learned that part of the things that we wish to do, are done by simply making or sharing in art together. By understanding that communities happen in moments we see how we create communities by creating moments. This reminds me of our earlier discussion about public and private and how so much of the lack of community in the suburbs is because of the lack of meaningful moments shred by the residences. Our artwork is linked to a specific place and when it is seen and appreciated by viewers then they too are linked to that space. The question was raised during the final discussion about how artists could better contribute to the world and be connected to important issues. I took that a little differently and I thought about how people in the world could connect better to it by benefiting from the insight and intuition that is used when creating art. I think that the process that someone undergoes when attempting to create something beautiful is also a process of trying to help others see beauty.
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