Lower Manhattan Sign Project


intro	art work	participating artists	reviews	documentation

ANTI-AMNESIA
by Lucy Lippard

(This essay is adapted from Lucy Lippard's December, 1992 "Spider's Nest" column in Z Magazine)

Amid the signage jungle of lower Manhattan, the metal plaques attached high on lampposts might first be taken as standard warnings from officialdom. But the imagery seems unlikely, a falling body, the photo of an open grave, portraits of a homeless man and a radical politician, a floating ladder and noose. And the texts just don't have that bureaucratic thud. On closer scrutiny of the information offered, mutiny is apparent. The lively array of pictorial signs are, of course, art. But rather than "review" the products (most of which work really well in context), I want to explore the process of this exemplary public art project.

The goal was to repossess history. "Whose History is Remembered? Who Will We Forget?" is the fundamental question asked by REPOhistory, a multiethnic collective of artists, writers. and educators whose Sign Project opened with panache and a parade in lower Manhattan in June 1992. The two-sided. 18 x 24, three-color photo silkscreen historical markers, 39 of them in all. are clustered between Canal Street and the Battery, mostly south of City Hall Park. Although their projected life span is one year (through June 1993), some may last longer. It's kind of a miracle that they are there at all.

The project was conceived by alumni of PAD/D (Political Art Documentation/Distribution), the activist art group (and Archive. now at the Museum of Modern Art) that almost survived the 1980's, and other experienced activist artists. First called The History Project, it began as a study groyp and developed by the fall of 1989 into a proposal (offered by REPOhistorian Greg Sholette) to "retrieve and relocate absent historical narratives at specific locations in the New York City area through counter-monuments, actions and events." Because many of the members were working already to counteract the official Columbus Quincentennial events, it was suggested at early meetings that the theme of colonialism/racism be adopted and the signs be scattered throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, so that people could deal with their own neighborhoods and local education. One ambitious idea was to map the entire city and catalogue the historical sites in order to determine an overriding theme. Finally the group decided to focus for the time being on the lost history of lower Manhattan, where it all began, and where most events could be categorized as colonialism and racism.

Study of existing plaques, literature, walking tours, archives, guides began: we raised issues about fund raising, public art guidelines, and where our energy would best be spent - gaining access to The Media or constructing alternate media? (The Sign Project does both.) The original plan was to do the whole project as guerrilla art, but it eventually became clear that too much work was going to be invested for a hit-and-run strategy.

The minutes record that we talked about historical layers, "the juxtaposition of oral history and more or less immediate history and 'untold' histories that exist beyond personal memories, histories told by different living generations posed against a presentation reaching much farther back." There were calls for a new historiography. We would emphasize "an understanding of history as something that is created and transmitted by the people," along the lines of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

In one early meeting we discussed different ways of looking at history; as monumental truth or palimpsest, a labyrinth of memory; as documented facts or as oral and written narratives by participants; as a linear progression or a chaos of catastrophes; as simulacrum of the past or as runaway simulations, parodies; as mass spectacles for the passive viewer or as participatory ritual; as inevitable and 'natural,' or as an open text allowing for magic realism; as traditional documentary or as questions about the role of the maker.

The sign form was decided on in May 1990. But it was still to be a long process. What seemed fairly simple - get a diverse bunch of artists together, pick sites and subjects, collectively discuss the projects, and put 'em up - took two more years. Readings in radical and imaginative history continued. The meetings were often lively history lessons as research began and people brought in possible sign subjects. Artists, writers, teachers joined and dropped out and others hung in and got serious and learned a lot about the historical enterprise as well as about working with other artists. (I'm still kicking myself that despite ongoing involvement with the group, I never got my sign together.) Sign prototypes were eventually shown at the Marxist School in June of 1991 and the next year was devoted to construction, mapping and endless fund raising from individuals in the progressive art community, solicited by mail, from a lot of grantwriting. There was a tremendous amount of bureaucratic and organizational work done by a hard-working core dedicated to the project's completion. The project finally cost about $10,000. It would have been a great deal more without the endless free labor.

The opening was a gala occasion on a lovely Saturday afternoon at Castle Clinton. complete with a printed proclamation from Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger proclaiming June 27, 1992 "REPOhistory Day." A fullscale parade with papier mache sculptures, a ship, tongues of flame ("Memories of Fire") stopped at each of ten nearby signs for content-specific storytelling/ performances. (The liveliest was several African-American teenagers commemorating the June 1990 visit of Nelson Mandela to lower Manhattan.)

Popular history is an idea in the air, with its roots in community theater. From the art angle, Jenny Holzer has used signage as an art form since the late 1970s. In the 1980s, Edgar Heap of Birds adapted it to resurrect Native history, while Martin Wong did a series of New York street signs featuring cryptic messages in sign language, and REPOhistorian Ed Eisenberg's "Groundworks" project informed communities about their exact distances from a planned nuclear port in Staten Island. More recently, other artists, especially Scott Parsons in South Dakota (commemorating massacres of Native people) and Gloria Bornstein in Seattle (original uses of the waterfront), have used the deadpan public announcement form to commemorate lost and disturbing histories.

From where I stand at the moment (admittedly obsessed with history as the road of good intentions to a hellish present, a result of my own years of Columbus-bashing), this kind of activism is preeminently satisfying. Too "didactic," "agit-prop," or "preachy" for some tastes, it nevertheless offers the solid ground that so much progressive art appears to long for. Rejecting the museum/gallery system is no longer a real option as it gets harder for any artist to survive the current economic depression. Most activist artists welcome the chance to exhibit their ideas while trying not to become too dependent on the system and continuing to seek out more encompassing, less compromising venues as well. The ]ast decade has demonstrated that the latter is easier if one has acquired a modest reputation in the former. It has proved frustrating for those purists who have fully rejected (or been rejected by) even the mainstream fringes to see those who were wiling to be politically eclectic in their exhibiting choices ("sellout" to some) get the grants and the invitations to do work in which others have much more experience.

REPOhistorian Lisa Maya Knauer observes that the signs took the current debates on history, multiculturalism, and school curriculums into the streets where everybody "can be confronted or provoked or challenged by the information." The audience consists of people living and working in the neighborhood, and the tourists that throng lower Manhattan. Understanding their movement and thought patterns, tying into their daily routines, was one of the challenges of the project. In midsummer, the New York Times reported that Hilary Kliros's and Betty Beaumont's sign about how Maiden Lane got its name, which included the disembodied drawing of a hymen, had been found "disgusting" by a New Jersey secretary who felt it was "offensive to women" and had "caused a small furor in the neighborhood." My own haphazard interviewing around the signs indicated that while some people didn't even notice them at all, those who took the time got involved in what they saw and enjoyed it.

Altogether the Sign Project's form provides an incredibly open frame within which to pursue personal agendas/obsessions, and I offer it here as a model for any community, large or small. Progressive feminists have long maintained that social change begins with self transformation. History offers information about the self that leads outwards. (For example, in 1991 the families of eight African American school children filed a suit against New York City for failing to revise the public schools' curricula to reflect their cultural heritage.) The ways in which the political is personal are at the heart of this project. REPOhistorians and their audience find themselves understanding better their own lives and those of their families, their communities, and their places, within the context of other lost histories.

There is a chance the signs will be permanently maintained. In any case there are ways to keep this project moving. (The general print media has been good to the Sign Project, while the art press has for the most part ignored it.) In an early meeting, children's history cards were suggested as an auxiliary; humorously disjunctive postcards and more general stickers questioning existing historical markers would also keep the spirit alive, as would video documentaries that students can watch and evaluate in relation to where they live and what they know. REPOhistory led walking tours. and these could be extended by an altered map of lower Manhattan to hand out to tourists. On a general level, other artists could remap their own towns, reframing and renaming what's already there. We can apply to art what Eduardo Galeano has said of literature: "Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight.