Marking Dissent Along City Lines
By Emily Lodish
With the Republicans came a literal redrawing of the lines and borders that make up New York City. For the duration of the Republican National Convention (August 28-September 2) NYPD officers peppered the environs of Madison Square Garden; police vehicles lined 34th Street, leaving little room between bumpers. The GOP, with the aid of the police, crisscrossed the city with barriers and netting–blockading roads and redirecting foot traffic. Incited by the encroachment of the RNC, NYC’s artistic community responded with a flurry of creative protests. To reclaim their city, they remapped it. Dissenters took to the streets–generating a wealth of cleverly conceived if haphazardly executed projects.
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In some cases, the dissenting groups called attention to the map itself. Greene Dragon, an anti-Bush media and street theater campaign, restaged Paul Revere’s famous ride from Lexington, Mass. down Lexington Avenue, adopting Revere’s warning of invasion while physically invading what they viewed as occupied territory. Other protesters tried to enclose one map in another. The Riverside Church conceived of a "Ring of Hope" that would unite various faith-based organizations and concerned citizens in a non-partisan vigil–participants holding individual lights would stand, as a thread of flames, circumscribing the island of Manhattan. If the power to outline the boundaries of an island belongs to those who rule its shores, this group attempted to claim that power–albeit, they could not rally enough participants to stretch the intended length and close the ring.
Still others drew their own map. Winding through the streets of New York City, the "Unemployment Line" stretched roughly three miles: from the corner of Broadway and Wall St., up to 31st St., and headed west, past Madison Square Garden. People For the American Way, a progressive advocacy organization, spearheaded the line, rallying thousands (reports account for between five and eight thousand) of citizens to stand single-file, holding pink slips, representing the over 8 million Americans currently unemployed and the 1.2 million jobs lost in America since March 2001. One participant on line between Broome and Spring commented that she and her son, "looked as far as we could see in each direction– there were ‘pink slips.’" The project’s success was in direct proportion to its turnout, a result of precise planning and effective organization.
Two creative activist groups in opposition to the RNC–RingOut and SpectralQ– challenged the conventions and translated the practice of traditional mapping as they worked with the physical, geographical landmarks of New York City.
The Republican National Committee’s decision to hold the RNC in New York City was directly related to Ground Zero, as the events of September 11th cannot be divorced from the city’s image. In an attempt to include themselves within this most democratic of cities, the Republicans grafted themselves onto the map of Ground Zero. The gesture can be viewed as respectful or exploitative, and no doubt aware of the mixed responses such a decision would trigger, the Republicans made the conspicuous choice not to host a formal event at Ground Zero; instead, a black screen with the words "September 11, 2001" hovered behind many convention speakers and, it should be noted, many delegates went to the world trade site personally to pay their respects. Though the GOP may have intended its absence at Ground Zero to be considerate, even reverent, the silence provoked the din of opposition from a group called RingOut (ringout.org). On August 28th, RingOut made a gentle racket with their event "Ringing for Healing: For All Victims of Violence All Over the World." Several thousand people gathered around Ground Zero to ring at least 2,749 bells for 9/11’s victims and "for new, responsible leadership in the White House," as their flier read.
When RingOut founder Christian Herold saw how protesters were penned in and relegated to curbs–a practice prevalent at the DNC in Boston as well–he decided to harness sound’s ability to cross physical boundaries. Ringing "cannot be hemmed in," RingOut’s mission statement reads. "False patriots constrain free speech and protest, but ringing is uncontainable! Ringing doesn’t assault, it surrounds, decentralizes, resounds freely through the air!" Herold views Ground Zero as a site that transcends the boundaries of political partisanship; he sought to prove that his message could penetrate a material barricade without any physical violation. "I wanted to inhabit the air which is a free, shared space," he adds. Even the inactive passerby could not exclude himself from RingOut’s presence; bells were rung and it was impossible not to listen.
The concept is striking: surround a plot of devastation with a support system of focused sound, to honor those killed while creating a festive atmosphere. Using the bell as its chief icon and tool–a symbol used to toll the dead as well as celebrate the newly married–RingOut embraces the complicated notion that some boundaries can be gracefully crossed. While something should be mourned, it may also be cause for rejoicing. Unfortunately, just as sound decentralizes, it can also confuse. The intended score for the event, created with the aid of composer and activist Pauline Oliveros, involved three parts and a complex chart with specific ring times. According to Susan Philips, who traveled from California to protest the convention, "the plan, while beautiful on paper, was impossible to pull off. There was no way to direct all those people to do anything," she comments; the disorder was frustrating. Herold should be lauded for inspiring more people than he could handle. A simpler plan, however, may have ensured a more polished and effective execution.
Far from the high fences at Ground Zero and network of barricades in midtown, the NYPD and park security watched with curious expressions from the fringe of Sheep Meadow in Central Park–a landmark less politicized, but no less significant to New Yorkers–as John Quigley bustled about the green center of Manhattan island. Quigley, founder of Aerial Art by Spectral Q, rushed around the park frantically on the morning of August 30th, charting a diagram of his own: the Statue of Liberty. He drew the outline with tiny flags and pink tape, an operation that took several hours, and then funneled in human bodies to make a wide-reaching mural of Lady Liberty, her flaming torch overhead. This was the fifty-first image in a "series of Human Mosaic creations designed to bring communities together to communicate important messages for the common good."
Lacking a permit, Quigley feared the clamp of the authorities, and ultimately decided not to directly publicize the event. It was up to the handful of organizers and loyal regulars to rally participants and recruit park-goers for what Quigley looks back on as, "a literal and physical expression of liberty." Days after the event, Quigley stresses the "energetic victory" of being able to create the image of liberty while exercising freedom in "a space at the symbolic heart of New York." The highest form of liberation at work, according to Quigley, however, is from one’s own identity. People come together to form "one entity, something larger than themselves…there is something inherently transformative about that act." Even the potentially hostile police presence seemed charmed by the colorful display; Patricia Foulkrod, a spokeswoman for Code Pink, told one policeman, "if you want to stay, that’s cool, but you gotta get in the image." Still, the police probably allowed the event because they viewed it as relatively harmless to the goings-on of the convention.
Quigley is dissatisfied with the snapshot of the mural taken from the top of a nearby building. Because he didn’t have adequate time to compensate for the sharp angle of perspective, the picture shows a distorted Lady Liberty. In his frazzled attempts to correct the image in the final moments before the shutter snapped, he ran amidst the bodies shouting, "Nobody moves but the eyes. You guys slither three feet this way, otherwise it’ll look like she just has a big mole on her." While Quigley relishes the chance to watch participants "get to act like kindergartners imagining what they must look like from the sky," as is the case with many childhood disillusionments, the documented reality fell short of his imaginative vision.
It is a common criticism of the liberal left in America (let us recall the chorus of disapproval at the heartfelt Howard Deaniacs) that while their intentions are good, it is their follow-through that lacks finesse. It is particularly regrettable that these artistic displays of dissent beg the same criticism. If the Ring of Light merely cups the island, if the ringing of the bells is unorchestrated and chaotic, if Lady Liberty’s form is warped, are these efforts undermining their own symbols? Are we simply left failing to encompass, a sum of disorganized voices with a distorted image of liberty?
Still, limitations, whether posed by the high level of security or the lack of time and resources, were unavoidable, and it seems almost silly to focus on the refined aesthetic in this makeshift festival of political art. Each work, barring any kind of empirical political or artistic "success," seems to be one of what Quigley terms, the "energetic victories." Mark Swed of the LA Times eloquently observes how the various pieces "channel defiant outrage into something constructive and potentially life-affirming." The political spirit that initially drove these works flourishes, navigating within and beyond existing artistic boundaries.
A map is not a world unto itself, though it is successful in as much as it evokes an entire world. These artistic protests, however jumbled, provoke innovative thought and allow us to consider the possibility of a flawless enterprise, the possibility of what could be. I wonder what the island of Manhattan would look like, at night, from above, its contour traced entirely by light.
