Public Space Camp (PSC) was part of the “Self Reliance School” at Compound Yellow during the Spring of 2018.
PSC was an exhibition and series of events presented by Compound Yellow and curated by Dylan Cale Jones and Laura Shaeffer. PSC was designed to engage members of the public in creatively defining, determining, imagining, observing, representing and using public spaces.
Read/Write Library: Public Space Camp Pop-up Library
In Read/Write’s workshop, participants discussed the role of libraries and other institutional keepers of knowledge and explore simple approaches to transferring that authority to their own communities by challenging and adding to the record. Participants generated questions about Oak Park and the Chicago area, neighborhoods, parks, public art, streets and transportation, or whatever line of local inquiry participants chose, and worked together to compile potential sources to answer them using the expertise of local media and our family, friends, and neighbors.
Hui-Min Tsen: At Bounded Space
You have met a boundary line. Have you crossed this line before? Can you see it? Does it have height? Does it surround you? Does it provide you with a homeland? Does it give you shelter? Can the wind cross it? Did someone make it visible? Does it legally divide? Does it follow the flow of water? Did someone tell you not to cross it? Is the boundary dangerous? If you cross this boundary, can you still breathe? Does the air become water? Do your lungs seize up in fear? Once you cross the line, can you come back? Would you want to? Do you feel more free? Is it a mirror image of where you came from? Are your stepping in? Are you stepping out? Do you feel different? Does it smell different? Do you belong?
Dylan Cale Jones: Drawing Session
For Public Space Camp, Dylan lead an observation and drawing session with members of the public. The observation and drawing session took place at the intersection of Central and Lake in Chicago, IL just east of Oak Park and Compound Yellow. After the drawing session, participants were invited to walk back to Compound Yellow to share, view, and discuss their drawings.
Aaron Walker: The Sign Game Workshop
Representatives from the Unsanctioned Sign Company lead "The Sign Game Workshop," an informal public sign writing and fabrication session, in which easily deployable signs were created over the course of an afternoon. Upon completion, participants were encouraged to install their signage in the public space of their choosing.
Norman Long: Sound Walk
Norman Long provided participants with the following information as he lead them on a guided soundwalk:
“What is a soundwalk? It is a guided exploration of a site using listening focused skills. We will listen to how the site sounds, as we are moving through it. I believe that through listening we have a tool to define communities and ourselves. We also can use those tools to shape who we are and where we live. We will be listening for changes, interactions, conditions, weather, traffic, animals, insects, people, vehicles and other factors in what makes a place what it is. We start by listening in our own silence. Being mindful of our own consciousness. Then we focus on how we sound as we move throughout the site. We then expand our listening to what is near to us, what just passed us and then what is ahead.
At the end of the walk we should be able to answer the following questions:
How do these sounds define where you are on the site? What sounds are constant? What sounds change the site? What moves through it? What are the durations? What do you expect to hear? What did you remember hearing? What sounds do you like? What sounds don’t you like?”
Hannah Barco: The Sidewalk Workshop
This one-day intensive workshop used the observation and sculptural reproduction of urban sidewalk to examine the systems that create, shape, and maintain both the infrastructure and culture of public space. Through a morning of observation and an afternoon of making, workshop participants discussed their experiences of, hopes for, and concerns about public space, while creating a new sidewalk path to welcome people into the front yard at Compound Yellow. How might the sidewalk play a vital role in contemporary democracy?
