The Providence Postcard Project

Last week at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University was the opening of “The Providence Postcard Project” by artist Betsey Biggs, which featured a postcard of the Arcade. It was a project realised as part of the Urban Cultural Heritage and Creative Practice international research collaborative, and is summarised in this excerpt from the UCHCP website:

1000 postcards – 100 photographs – 22 neighborhoods. ”The Postcard Project,” by artist Betsey Biggs, explores the familiar souvenir medium of postcards as a source of reflection by the residents of Providence on what meanings the city holds. Beginning this week, the project will be distributing pre-addressed, postage-paid postcards featuring photographs taken by Biggs during her visits to the neighborhoods of Providence. Local residents and members of the general public are invited to pick up postcards at Providence Community Library locations throughout the city, write to the Postcard Project, and share their own stories about the many places of Providence.

One of Betsey’s photographs featured the Arcade, and there were some fascinating responses that I got to read at the opening of the exhibition. Betsey was kind enough to let me reproduce the Arcade postcards on this blog, as they provide an interesting addition to the research conducted for this project.

Front of the postcard featuring the Arcade, from "The Providence Postcard Project" by Betsey Biggs. The photo depicts the stairs to the second balcony level on the Weybosset St side.

When I saw this postcard at the opening reception of the exhibition, only the top message was there. This was written by Tim, one of the dancers involved in this project, and details the phrase that occurred on these steps as part of the piece. The message below was added during the time the exhibition was up, and seems to be a response to the new plans unveiled for the Arcade.

I would love to hear more of this story.

This was another postcard that had a second note added to it while being on display in the Granoff. The sideway message is hard to make out, but reads roughly as follows:

'Worked on second floor in sales / saw many stores come + go / 2nd floor not much traffic. First night nice music they hosted/ Johnson + Wales / store (?) full of yummy thin (?) / the Prov ____ / ____? not sure but giant cookies'

Cookies have come up before in some of the interviews I did way back in September (see here and here for two sets of memories that involved the cookies); memories connect and interweave, maybe blur, and ultimately reinforce a sense of place triggered by the invitation to write on the back of an empty postcard. 

Next steps

Since the time of the performances, almost exactly three months ago, I have continued to think and reflect on the project. Despite envisioning the performances as something of a culmination, I was aware that there would be a period of processing and reflection. Some of this (as much as I could manage) has made its way onto this blog, but much has not, some of which I hope has been going on in the minds of others. One thing that has come up for me is how central the theme of mediation is to the project. Especially after seeing the the video footage and still photographs that were taken during the performances, I realised just how many layers of mediation are involved in the various outcomes of the project: bodies mediating memories, memories mediating place, bodies mediating place, archives mediating place, video mediating bodies, photographs mediating bodies mediating place…the list circles back on itself endlessly.

The appropriate response to this continuous mediation of place with its many rich layers seems to be to highlight it, and to that end I am starting to work on an installation version of “An Arcade Project.” 

“An Arcade Project, Installed” will be exhibited as part of the American Dance Legacy Initiative’s winter Minifest, and will be displayed during the second week of March in the “living room spaces” of the Granoff Center for Creative Arts at Brown University. My ideas for the installation are still taking, and shifting, shape. But here are a few preliminary ideas for things I am interested in including: video footage of the performance, an audio soundtrack of the interviews, feedback and thoughts on the piece, still photographs (framed and hung? projected onto walls?), and I would really like at least one interactive component. Since I did not take any of the video footage or photographs, this installation will almost certainly involve some collaborators, and I am excited to see in what new ways the project material manifests itself through this collaboration.

Meanwhile, the life story of the Arcade continues, and I continue to document news and stories related to the building.

The future of the Arcade

There were some whispers of plans for the Arcade a few months ago (discussed in this previous blog post), but now it seems for certain that the Arcade has renovation in its future.

On January 25th Mayor Angel Taveras, Senator Jack Reed, Governor Lincoln Chafee and representatives of the Arcade attended an unveiling ceremony for the new plans. They were joined by "more than 100 business leaders, government officials and downtown leaders" according to this article on the official website of the city of Providence.

The new incarnation of the Arcade will be a combination of retail and residential spaces. Shops and restaurants will fill the ground floor spaces, and, in a departure from previous designs, the second and third levels will be converted into 48 loft-style apartments. According to the Daily Dose, the apartments "will be furnished, including refrigerators, dishwashers and microwaves - but no stoves - will be marketed toward recent college graduates and young professionals, Granoff said. Rents will start at $550 per month". The no stoves part is an interesting one- perhaps limited by fire restrictions on a historical building? It will be interesting to see how this feature affects the clients that these apartments will attract, and whether this stipulation will eventually be modified. (A comment left under this article raises a good point: "Why would they need to waste what little space they have with a dishwasher? they don’t have stoves, so I think just using the old sink and drying rack method would work").

The title of the Providence website article, "A Providence Landmark is Reborn" suggests that a similar rhetoric to the rhetorics of the past is being used about the Arcade today. Themes of monumentality, historical significance, and myth abound.

The reopening of the Arcade is an exciting development for Providence...This project breathes new life into America's oldest indoor mall and one of our city's most historically significant buildings, with a mix of retail, restaurants and affordable housing for young professionals in the heart of downtown Providence. --Mayor Angel Taveras 

It will be called The Arcade Providence and it will be a historic revival...This historic revival will create an Arcade community, increase the energy in the heart of downtown, help drive business to surrounding retailers, attract new retail and restaurants, and bring micro-loft residents into downtown to live, eat and shop - and it begins today. --Mr Granoff

It is hard to read these descriptions of the Arcade and not be reminded of similar rhetoric used just over 30 years ago in  conjunction with the 1980 renovation and opening of the Arcade. Specifically one quote discussed a previous blog post comes to mind. Taken from the 1980 opening campaign, it describes how the Arcade is "not just in the heart of Providence. It is the heart of downtown Providence."

Photo of Mayor Angel Taveras at the Arcade on 25th January, 2012. Photo from http://providenceri.com/mayor/a-providence-landmark-is-reborn

Conversation notes

These are my notes from a conversation with Laura (who I interviewed earlier in the year about her memories of the Arcade) after she saw the performance where she shared some of her thoughts:

The building should be listed as a cast member- the dancer's relationship to it gave it character, personality.
It successfully created a structure to work with the 'accidents', moments where people not involved in the project became a part of it.
It made you look at everything differently.
'Mirror duet' was the "most effective" part- it brought the two sides of the Arcade together.
The piece as a whole created a situation where there was a lot for the audience to "puzzle out".

Her comment that "it made you look at everything differently" is particularly exciting for me to hear, as part of the intention was to re-contextualise and de-familiarise the space to allow multiple identities for the space, and create new relationships to it.

And although there are several parts of the piece that I find particularly satisfying, the 'mirror duet' is definitely one of them. This is the section where Amy and Nadia perform the same phrase across the length of the Arcade. One performs it on the right, one on the left, so they mirror each other. It is discussed more in this post and can be seen below.





It is one of the most successful moments in terms of connecting the two sides, but also in challenging the audience's perception of being able to see the whole picture, imparting a fuller understanding of the sense of the spatial extent of the Arcade, and in playing with the inaccessibility of the interior.

Reflections: Family Portrait

Since the performances I have been having conversations about the piece that continue to deepen my reflections on it.

In a conversation with dancers Natasha and Kelli about three weeks after the performances, the "family portrait" section came up as one of the most interesting/provocative moments of the piece for them. This is the part when Natasha, Kelli, Tim and Nadia sit on the Westminster steps for an extended period of time (Amy is making her way around from the Weybosset side) staring straight ahead, almost sitting to attention, in a way reminiscent of a posed portrait.

N: It was "the most banal movement-wise, but it lasts for long enough that it stands out as odd in the context of people walking by."
K: "It was more startling, which I find to be odd, than the parts when we were moving more."

A recording of 'Family Portrait' from Saturday's performance, filmed by Sam Holland, can be seen in the clip below. This photo from an earlier post is also of 'Family Portrait'.

It is one of the moments that I find the most satisfying and delightful because of its 'oddness'. It lasts a little longer than is comfortable (just over a full minute); there is an expectation that something that should happen, but it doesn't. Yet I find that it remains interesting because of the ambiguous relationship set up between the four performers.

An Arcade Project in the Inventory

This is a piece that I was asked to write for the Inventory, the newsletter of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. The full newsletter can be found here.

Reflections from an audience member

These are some reflections from Mimi, an audience member who was generous enough to share her thoughts on the piece with me:

Going past the Arcade is a different experience for me now since seeing your piece; I have a connection to it. It has made me think about the theme of common property.  Experiencing your piece made me feel some sort of ownership of the environment I live in which I didn't have before. Perhaps a lot of people feel disconnected to buildings and urban spaces because they do not 'own' them, but your piece brings to mind how abstract the concept of property is. That is why I couldn't help think about your piece in the context of Occupy Providence. Here is a movement that is making people feel empowered enough to have more 'ownership' then they do. Occupying a public space allows people to become more engaged with those around them.
Back to your piece: although the Arcade is not 'public,' I felt that your piece made it so. I also liked how I, as an audience member, could interact within the piece. By interacting, I mean that when I had to follow the dancers around to each side, I felt that I had become part of the dance essentially. It felt initially strange, like I wasn't supposed to, but then I understood the importance of doing so.
I saw some skateboarders doing some tricks on the steps of the Arcade the other day. They had made a unique connection to the space in the same way your piece did. It's a connection that perhaps more the people who go in and out of Downtown PVD would never experience. What a gift I think!

The connection with the Occupy movement is an interesting one that had not crossed my mind at all- a pertinent example of the way in which audiences can find significances and associations that were not intended by the creator. It also speaks to the way in which context is crucial. Seeing this piece while the Occupy movement is constantly in the media allows for different connections than if the piece had occurred this time last year before the movement, or even if it had occurred in a location more geographically removed from the site of Occupy Providence (Burnside park is just on the other side of Wesminster Street, across Kennedy Plaza); like any work it does not exist in a vacuum but constantly informs, and is informed by, both its temporal and spatial context.