FORWARD: Issue #7: Monuments & Memorials
Public Participation
A collaborative monument honors the longstanding tradition of Cherokee basketmaking and pays homage to the site’s location on an ancestral trading route. Browse below to read more on this project, ᏔᎷᏣ The Basket. Photo courtesy Center for Craft.
Inviting people to be immersed in the process, practices, or activation of the monument.
Little Central America, 1984—A Sanctuary Then and Now
A performance series becomes a living memorial to Central American refugees and honors the history of the sanctuary movement, with the aim of inspiring political action.
Location: Washington, DC; Los Angeles, CA; Houston, TX
Date: 2019—present
Artists: Elia Arce, Rubén Martínez, and different artists in each city
Partners: Circuit Network, GALA Hispanic Theatre, DiverseWorks
Note: Little Central America, 1984 is scheduled to be performed at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, CA on December 13, 14, and 15, 2024. The Latinx Research Center at UC–Berkeley, with Central Americans for Empowerment, are sponsoring a panel on art and immigration on December 5, 2024. The panel will be moderated by Roberto Bedoya (Cultural Affairs Manager, City of Oakland, CA). This same panel was moderated by Sixto Wagan (Project Director, Greater Houston BIPOC Arts Network and Fund) during the performance sponsored by The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.
Little Central America, 1984 performance at All Souls Church in Washington, DC with performers Tim Fábrega (father), and Belén Delancey (daughter). Co-writers and co-executive producers Rubén Martínez and Elia Arce. Photo by Stan Weinstein.
When Elia Arce and Rubén Martínez met in 1980s Los Angeles, they were both performing artists making art amid the urgency of the international solidarity and sanctuary movements. At the time, churches around the country were providing sanctuary in the form of shelter, emergency aid, and legal assistance to many of the nearly one million Central Americans fleeing violence and repression in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
The two first collaborated on a show called Blessed by the Contradictions, a commemoration of the late Salvadorean Marxist poet and revolutionary soldier Roque Dalton. The performance, which featured poetry, dance, and puppetry by many of Arce’s other friends and collaborators, was staged in the basement of the Echo Park United Methodist Church.
More than 30 years later, as Central American immigrants again face dangerous crossings and, in many cases, incarceration once they reach the United States, Arce and Martínez returned to the church to produce Little Central America, 1984. The show follows a present-day family as they seek asylum in the United States, tying together past and present by arguing that the same challenges migrants faced in 1984 remain, a generation later. “We started to wonder, where are all the churches that were part of the sanctuary movement [in the 1980s]? We need them now,” Arce says. “Are people putting themselves on the line now, like they were then?”
Little Central America, 1984 performance at All Souls Church in Washington, DC. Co-writers and Co-executive producers Rubén Martínez and Elia Arce. Video of Río Grande in the background. Photo by Stan Weinstein.
Little Central America, 1984 performance at All Souls Church in Washington, DC. Co-writers and co-executive producers Rubén Martínez and Elia Arce. Photo by Stan Weinstein.
Little Central America, 1984 performance at All Souls Church in Washington, DC. Co-writers and co-executive producers Rubén Martínez and Elia Arce. Photo by Stan Weinstein.
Little Central America, 1984 performance at All Souls Church in Washington, DC. Co-writers and co-executive producers Rubén Martínez and Elia Arce. Photo by Stan Weinstein.
After their initial performances in 2019, Arce and Martínez partnered with Circuit Network to bring Little Central America to Washington, DC, and Houston, Texas, with another run planned in Berkeley, California, at St. John's Presbyterian Church & Center in December 2024. The show changes in every city, featuring poems read by local activists and performances by local musicians between vignettes. Each show also honors three different activists or leaders every night, nominated by the local community.
The process of creating each performance is as important as the show itself. In each city, Arce and Martínez hire a local field producer months ahead of time. Often, working with people to tell their stories reactivates connections and inspires action. “That’s where the change occurs,” says Arce. “People come away feeling empowered: ‘I have all of this behind me, pushing me forward.’” Little Central America, 1984 has become a kind of living memorial, created, she says, “so we can change how our stories end.”
People come away feeling empowered: 'I have all of this behind me, pushing me forward.'
From the performance in Houston at First United Methodist Church. Photo by Elmer Romero
Lynda’s Phones
Originally a memorial to a woman who fought for people’s right to medical aid in dying, this series of interactive phone installations now helps people cope with the grief of losing a loved one by “calling” them.
Location: Ridgefield, CT, and others
Date: 2023–ongoing
Artist: Lynda Bluestein, Jacob Shannon
Partners: None
Photos courtesy Jacob Shannon.
On September 24, 2023, Lynda Bluestein and her family and friends gathered at Ridgebury Congregational Church in Ridgefield, Connecticut, to dedicate a new feature: an old-fashioned rotary phone, standing unplugged in a gravel clearing.
A plaque under the phone reads: “This phone will never ring. It is connected by love to nowhere and everywhere. It is for those who have an empty place in their heart left by a loved one. Say hello, say goodbye. Talk of the past, the present, the future. The wind will carry your message.”
The “wind phone” was installed as an interactive memorial to Lynda’s life and her legacy of advocacy for medical aid in dying (MAID). In 2022, Lynda sued the state of Vermont over its residency requirement for MAID, arguing that this provision of the law was unconstitutional. She succeeded, making the treatment available to herself and others who want to travel to Vermont to access MAID. Lynda died in accordance with her wishes on January 4, 2024.
The first reported-on wind phone was created in 2010 by Itaru Sasaki of Ōtsuchi, Japan. The phone became a communal resource for people mourning losses in the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Lynda, inspired by this example, saw wind phones like the one she installed in Connecticut as powerful ways for people to express their grief, and hoped this would invite further collective conversation about grief in a culture resistant to its expression.
Her son, Jacob Shannon, says his mom hoped the phone project would also further the advocacy of medical aid in dying. He agrees with her point of view. “I really believe if we had a better understanding of grief,” he says, “we would be able to have better conversations about what death looks like or could look like.”
Lynda Shannon Bluestein speaks into a wind phone.
Like the Great Pyramids of Egypt, each side on the pyramid atop this Connecticut wind phone slopes at 51 degrees. This sympathetic design detail, says Jacob Shannon, aims to help transmit energy.
If we had a better understanding of grief, we would be able to have better conversations about what death looks like or could look like.
— Jacob Shannon
Linda Shannon Bluestein.
Now, Jacob is honoring his mom’s memory via Lynda’s Phones, a nonprofit organization that helps people design, construct, and maintain wind phones as part of their efforts to change the conversation about grief and dying.
Jacob says he’ll measure the project’s success not by how many phones he builds, but by how far he’s able to spread their message. “Part of the joy is seeing all the different amazing things people do with this idea,” he says. “The phones can be beautiful works of art, but [creating one] can also be literally screwing a phone to a tree. The goal is to normalize conversations about grief, to encourage people to talk about it out loud, out in the world, instead of just behind closed doors.”
Photos courtesy Jacob Shannon.
The phones can be beautiful works of art, but [creating one] can also be literally screwing a phone to a tree. The goal is to normalize conversations about grief, to encourage people to talk about it out loud, out in the world, instead of just behind closed doors.
— Jacob Shannon
To that end, Jacob hopes to eventually take the message on the road in the form of a wind phone bus. Mindful of their importance as memorials to his mom and her work, he also sees these phones as community resources, akin to libraries or free stores. In fact, he has had more success installing the phones when they’re framed as community resources or artworks rather than memorials to an individual, since individual memorials call for a more stringent approval process in many cities.
When asked what his mom would want to say to people reading about wind phones, Jacob says, “I think she’d want people to know that they can choose for themselves what death should look like, and how they grieve.”
ᏔᎷᏣ The Basket
A collaborative monument honors the longstanding tradition of Cherokee basketmaking and pays homage to the site’s location on an ancestral trading route.
Location: Asheville, NC
Date: 2020–present
Artist: Mary W. Thompson (Eastern Band of Cherokee)
Partners: Community stakeholders, the New Kituwah Academy, and the Cherokee Speakers Council
Note: The Kituwah Preservation and Education Program helped with Cherokee language translations for the project.
The installation recognizes local Cherokee history and contemporary cultural contributions, engaging thousands of pedestrians with Indigenous craft traditions. It also serves as an outdoor meeting space. Photo courtesy Center for Craft.
Significant public response to a monument can come even before it’s erected—if the community’s input is included in the planning process. ᏔᎷᏣ The Basket is a public art installation in downtown Asheville that commemorates the longstanding history of the Cherokee in western North Carolina, as well as the region’s Indigenous craft culture. Over the course of 2020, the organizers engaged 55 community members and held 8 gatherings that helped shape the project.
ᏔᎷᏣ The Basket began as part of a plan to revitalize the block surrounding a historic building in downtown Asheville, 67 Broadway Street. The installation was planned and developed by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) in collaboration with the Center for Craft, which is housed in this building. Since 2017, the city has worked to increase foot traffic to this area, which in turn has allowed ᏔᎷᏣ The Basket to grow and develop with the input of two community stakeholders: the New Kituwah Academy and the Cherokee Speakers Council. These organizations generated the Cherokee syllabary (alphabet), which is visible on the installation. And basketmaker ᎺᎵ ᏔᎻᏏᏂ Mary W. Thompson, a member of the EBCI, served as the primary design consultant.
By centering the participation of community members and positioning an Indigenous basketmaker at the helm, this engagement-driven public art project promotes placekeeping, which is about improvement to benefit local people, over placemaking, which has often led to displacement and gentrification.
The installation design references Cherokee basketry in its materials, structure, colors, patterns, and use. Photo by Swinney Creative, courtesy Center for Craft.
Photo by Swinney Creative, courtesy Center for Craft.
Design elements like the chevron pattern cutout of the steel decking (visible in the floor) is an abstraction of the basket pattern known as “falling water” and doubles as a drain for rainwater, snow, and ice. Photo by Swinney Creative, courtesy Center for Craft.
FORWARD: Issue #7
Monuments & Memorials
© COPYRIGHT 2024 - FORECAST PUBLIC ART ISSN 2768-4113