October 19, 2021 – Cultural Content
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Dear Friends,
In March 2020, when the pandemic resulted in sudden, widespread quarantine, we invited six artists to demonstrate how they use their creative processes to navigate unrelenting uncertainty, fluctuating productivity, and long periods of work in isolation. We presented their resulting participatory programs and activities in a public series called Adaptive Practices, based on the idea that we all needed to develop our own creative processes in order to manage the challenges of quarantine.
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More than 18 months later, still in the pandemic’s shadow, we’re also grappling with overdue reckonings with economic and social inequities inflected by race, gender, and immigration and health status; a worsening climate crisis; growing distrust in information sources; threats to our political system; and widening civic polarization. The simultaneous challenges we face as individuals, family members, community members, and citizens of a nation as well as of the world, feel overwhelming. As our long unexamined norms undergo groundbreaking, essential transformation, how can we learn to navigate, appreciate, and integrate this necessary upheaval and churn? |
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With this question in mind, Rewilding: Alive in the Churn transforms the Library's third-floor Joan T. Boghossian Gallery into an interactive biome, and invites guest artists, performers, practitioners, documentarians, scholars, experimenters, and anyone with curiosity to take a vital plunge.
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Rejecting the violence inherent in the ideal of the “clean slate,” which asserts that in order to create, we must first erase everything that has come before, Rewilding: Alive in the Churn invents a physical and virtual space that is iterative, collaborative, overlapping, and ever-changing, with artists and members of the public working and reworking the space, by the hour and by the day, creating a layered history that builds upon itself continuously.
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Like the urban landscape being retaken by plants, a process known as rewilding, we find ourselves leaving behind our traditional roles and lives and returning to a kind of wildness, in order to stay alert and alive in the churn. We invite you to come participate and purposefully reflect on this process of rewilding with us.
Learn more about how Rewilding works here! Learn how to view and participate in the physical and digital versions of Rewilding here!
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Last month we introduced you to Documenting Place As Witness, Providence College Associate Professor of Art Eric Sung’s large-scale photographs depicting PPL’s spaces when they were pandemic-empty, now on rotating view, two at a time, near the Welcome Desk as you enter the building. Eric and his colleague Nick Longo, PC Professor of Global Studies, recently stopped by PPL with student Nina Amatulli to install the next two photographs in the series, and we thought that this would be a great time to hear more from Eric about what inspired this project, and why and how PPL became a locus for both documentation and exhibition: |
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From the beginning of COVID-19, it quickly became clear to me that it would impact us heavily. I began working closely with two of my colleagues on an interdisciplinary research project focusing on the impact of COVID and artists’ responses to it. Later, this project transformed to a study of how arts can and should be a portal for gathering community response. |
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An immensely complex event, the pandemic has influenced all aspects of our lives, from social policy all the way to our individual experiences. As an artist, I felt the need to create a space where individual voices could be expressed, collected, and heard. This whole thing happened too quickly, without allowing us to secure the capacity to think deeply about the meaning of what we were experiencing.
My intentional, deliberate decision to work with Providence Public Library as my very first exhibition venue for this work was based on knowing what this place means to the Providence community. PPL has long provided community focused infrastructure, both physically and spiritually, where all visitors feel welcomed and comfortable. It is not only that visitors are there to utilize the wealth of resources that PPL is thrilled to share, it also has a long history of serving as a community hub, where all members come to connect with one another. It is an educational space as much as community interaction space. This is the place where people come and learn, dream, communicate, and share. I simply couldn't think of a better place to serve as the first venue for this work.
During the time of community lock down, when I was first making the photographs of the new, empty spaces, I was thrilled to see what amazing renovation work PPL has done. Instead of demolishing the ‘old library’, there was such a care and attention given to fully celebrate the rich history and tradition of PPL, now equipped with new architectural choices. The renovation enables the space to serve the community as it has done for more than a century, and also meet the ‘new needs’ from the community even better.
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But as much as I enjoyed visually studying the space while I was photographing, the experience felt apocalyptic. The fact that I was there alone, at a place where I expect to see library users from all age groups and hear busy footsteps as people carry their books from one place to other, created a sense of urgency to document both this place as a witness in this time of silence, and also my own visual interpretation of my response.
My artwork is a product of heavy investment in my thinking. Seeing the works in an exhibition, where the images are carefully curated to best share them with audience, is always an overwhelmingly joyful experience. This time, as I was installing my works in the public exhibition space, sharing my images with all the visitors as they arrive in the main entrance way to the library, I was uncertain what made me happier: seeing my curated photographs on view, or seeing the library alive with people, so changed from when the photographs were made.
In presenting these images, I am visually asking to my audience to consider: “This is what the place looked like when you were not here. How has it been for you? Really, how has it been?” My goal is to have my work initiate a deep conversation, allowing us to flex a forgotten muscle that we neglected for so long, due to the global urgency during the pandemic. Experience without expression becomes depression. Experience needs to be reflected, expressed, and articulated, so we may heal and help one another. It is my sincere hope that my audience will feel encouraged and motivated to participate and share their stories, express their experiences. These community stories will complete my project, and I am certain there is no better place to hear the stories than Providence Public Library.
Come in soon to see the newest images on view, and record your responses to the photographs here.
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And while you’re here, don’t miss yet another wonderful exhibit, Providence Waterways: Excavating the Layers of Field's Point, on view in the Rhode Island Room until December 20, guest curated by Traci Picard of Doors Open RI and Dan Mitrovic of the Providence City Archives, and presented as a collaborative project of Providence Waterways, Doors Open RI, Providence City Archives, and PPL. Inspired by the items on display, Dan and Tracy are offering a free creative, participatory workshop on two remaining dates; read more and register (required) for your date of choice: Friday, October 29 from 3 to 4:30 pm; or Saturday, December 4 from 11 am to 12:30 pm.
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Finally, please join us virtually on Tuesday, November 2 from 6 to 7pm for The State of the Pandemic in Rhode Island, with Drs. Philip Chan and James McDonald. Both doctors are medical directors at the RI Department of Health, professors at Brown, and leaders in the state's fight against COVID. They will present the latest public health information on the pandemic and answer questions submitted in advance by the audience. A Spanish-speaking interpreter will be available. Learn more, register (required), and submit your questions for the doctors here. This program is presented by PPL's Conservator Society, learn more about these generous supporters of PPL here!
Please pass along this enews to any friends who might also like to keep up with cultural happenings at PPL, and encourage them to subscribe here!
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And please join us to view, excavate, and/or rewild soon! Our hours and other information on visiting can be found here. As a reminder, masks are still required for everyone entering the building, even if you are vaccinated.
Alert, alive, and in gratitude,
Christina Bevilacqua
Programs & Exhibitions Director
Janaya Kizzie
Programs & Events Manager
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p.s. Rewilding artist Holly Ewald and PPL’s 2018 Creative Fellow and Adaptive Practices artist Becci Davis have curated a wonderful new exhibit, Unpolished Echoes: Explore the Past and Present of Mashapaug Park, featuring works by a dozen artists at the Roger Williams Museum of Natural History and Planetarium, now through April 24. It works in beautiful harmony with the Providence Waterways: Excavating the Layers of Field’s Point exhibition, we encourage you to see both!
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