Travel & Gather: Redrawing Red
A WORK IN PROGRESS
– The pressing issue in Chicago communities that your project addresses
Travel & Gather: Redrawing Red begins with the premise that cities, their resulting plan, and infrastructure simultaneously represent patterns of habitation and the political struggles of their citizens. Over time, the city has grown by developing new neighborhoods, annexing adjacent communities, and developing suburbs, often based on consolidating political and/or economic power. Of particular importance are the migrations of BIPOC and immigrant communities as they move through and sometimes out of the city while experiencing redlining and restrictive covenants. Consequently, the city is a forgotten meta-memorial or monument to these histories.
– Project elements and activities
Travel & Gather: Redrawing Red uses the Range Mobile Lab (RML) to generate a series of public performances, and tactical graphics, and mobile media experiences that delve deeper into local histories based on location. Current inhabitants often inhabit spaces shaped by structural and social forces which they inherit without a sense of context. Through a series of video performances, the RML will map the historical borders of the city of Chicago as the city grew, developed new neighborhoods, or annexed adjacent independent communities. The public performance projections will be composed of live captured video of these boundaries and mixed with data which excavates historic changes to demographics and real-estate values to highlight the transfer of wealth through property ownership across generations. Performances are live streamed via YouTube.
After the performances are completed, the video is recombined into tactical graphics placed in the built environment to mark and define the historic borders. The aim is to distribute the imagery in a density such that the pattern and path are coherent to people walking along the street. Within the graphics will be QR codes that link to a web site where site specific histories of the city’s development combined with the real-estate, wealth, and demographic data over time. This data and video content will also be repackaged into an Augmented Reality Application which will allow one to experience the content as an overlay of a real-time view from the viewer’s mobile device.
The overall project presents an evolving set of meta-monuments that operate to define place and evoke the complex relationships between the political and the social through the evolution of the built environment.
RESOURCES
City of Chicago Maps 1900-1914
The University of Chicago Library