The Provocative Power of Discomfortable Invitations Toward Imagination

One of the most stimulating aspects of Pratt's MFA in Writing program is the emphasis on Engaged and Collaborative Writing Practices (I capitalize since that's the name of a core course). It's interesting because this idea of community engagement and collaborative writing practices are simultaneously why I most wanted to attend Pratt and where I felt the most resistance about entering. Creation has always been solitary - or with ghosts, rather. I've never been good at making with others. However, Raw Fiction begs to differ. Obviously, I'm very passionate about co-creation. Perhaps it's where I draw the line between community and self that I find resistance. That line is beginning to shift or fade.

That said, I've been documenting random or deliberate acts/arts of participation wherever I go these days. For example, I was in Chatham yesterday and saw this:

The sign reads: "please speak slowly and clearly into the pipe"

I was with family and we were playing with the pipe, as the sign invites. It is outside of a storefront, a family owned grocery and cafe. A little boy came out and informed us that his mother put that sign there, the pipe doesn't actually do anything. His tone implied he was both amused by his mother and the general public's willingness to engage but he personally did not see the point in it. Since it didn't do anything. 

But it does so much. It invites play. It provokes imagination. People want to speak but they don't know what to say. It's a wonderful, simple initiative with endless potential to inform future acts of creation and participation. I didn't say this to the boy, I imagine he'll figure it out for himself one day.

Christian Hawkey, my faculty mentor for Raw Fiction this academic year, has been trying to impress on me the idea of participatory walks for the youth, as designed by faculty member Todd Shalom. Shalom is the founder of Elastic City, an org that  "intends to make its audience active participants in an ongoing poetic exchange with the places we live in and visit." Elastic City is a very open idea and involves numerous artists whose interpretative style/personal passions will direct the project in numerous ways as well as leaving a lot of room for participant engagement to dictate the outcome. As a couple of audience members noted, the prompt, or assignment, can be seen as an invitation as opposed to an imposition.

I just mentioned an audience and you're probably thinking: "What audience?" I went to Elastic City Talks today. The day is part of the Elastic Walks Festival running from September 26 - October 7 in various locations in New York City, including participation in the Brooklyn Museum's new "Crossing Brooklyn" exhibit opening to the public on Oct 3. The series includes four panels: A Genealogy of the Participatory Walk, Politics of the Walk, The Participatory Walk as a New Performative Framework, Impossibility in Participatory Performance.

As I type the titles I regret I will not be there for the last panel which starts in ten minutes. I was only able to attend the second panel, Politics of the Walk, moderated by Christian Hawkey with panelists including Rachel Levitsky (my professor in collaborative and engaged writing practices).

I wanted to engage with this idea Christian thinks will work so well with Raw Fiction.

I get it now.

It (the endless possibility of "it"being walks, participation, Elastic City, etc.) actually reminds me of an assignment I gave to my youth in Raw Fiction 1.0, as Amber (former participant) would call it. Probably inspired by my former professor, Lydia Davis, as most of my prompts were whether directly or subconsciously stored, I asked my youth to go somewhere, a cafe or such (since it was winter), and sit for half an hour writing all thoughts, observations-- a piece inspired by one's surroundings. The assignment kind of fell flat, as none of the other ones did. (Usually I gave them assignments to write in a manner influenced by the readings provided; except for Baldwin, which I thought a tall order, so I asked them to underline some powerful lines in Going to Meet the Man.) Firstly, they didn't really try to engage with their surroundings for a full half hour, that much was obvious, and secondly I don't think they really knew how to. Perhaps I was asking them to speak in a foreign language - which is a course that Pratt will offer its MFA cohort next semester.

The provocative power of discomfortable invitations toward imagination.

The guided walk could be a way to immerse a young participant in observing their surroundings and thinking about them in artistic and political ways. Therefore initiating a sense of engagement with community, its structures, limitations and possibilities to transcend barriers: imagined and tangible.

At the end of the panel, when I approached Rachel and Christian after the discussion (which also included panelists Eve Mosher and Ryan Tracy) to thank them for the ideas, Rachel suggested a finale walk. Obviously, I cannot determine the final event of a youth-driven project. But as a suggestion for the youth. A finale outside in shared space. Public space. Youth leading a poetic tour of sorts. Tickles my imagination.

And it reminds me that Raw Fiction was never supposed to be in an enclosed space. Well, maybe not never. But I'd decided at some point that we'd just use the library's common space for our project. So other youth could witness, engage or join if they so wished. That idea ended up not working out since the group decided to meet in Manhattan so I confirmed space with the Science, Information and Business Library (SIBL) in mid-town where all the youth from all the boroughs could meet.

More from the Panel on the Politics of the Walk:
There are the very tangible politics of walking while black, as in the case of Michael Brown, the teenager in Ferguson, MO, who was murdered by police officers as he was walking home with a friend. The delineated spheres defining public and private space, protected and shared and trespass-able. And who can trespass, the police, in the case of Michael Brown were trespassing in residential space, but the laws of trespassing, as in law enforcement officials' ability to trespass in homes and stairways and rooftops to murder young men (women, the elderly, the disabled, a seven-year-old asleep in her bed) are relative. Are biased. Are unfair. Are corrupt. So the politics of the walk can go there.

The politics of the walk can also be less particular and more theoretical. Eve Mosher discussed the idea of authorship in her opening comments. I can insert Raw Fiction into this context, too. An artist or activist can envision an action or creation, but it is up to the players and participators to interpret it and produce it in their own vision with their own perspective influencing the end product.

Also, the concept of the impact that you make on others as you move came up. Something very simple. An action most of us make every day. Walking down the street. Do we walk gentle. Do we notice those around us. Do we attempt to engage our fellow humans in positive, if not subtle, ways?

Rachel Levitsky took these simple ideas and complicated them in her poetic essay presentation. She questioned the politics of presence. A body that is perceived to look in a certain way, and therefore, perhaps, perceived to be a certain kind of person, a threat to the community's survival. Perceived or real. Race issues are always present in the body. The white person who moves in a black neighborhood holds a host of meanings; as the black body who moves in the white neighborhood. Who is at risk? I diverge from her point a bit. Her thoughts were on the self. She, a Jewish woman, a daughter of a German refugee, a white woman with a good job living in Crown Heights, could easily be interpreted as a threat to the neighborhood. She, a lesbian, woman, a writer and an activist is constantly critiquing racist institutions and oppressive structures. Her body in a space may always be misinterpreted just as Will Smith's body in a space may be misinterpreted (to keep things light), for example he was arrested in an episode of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air for being a black man in a white neighborhood who'd lost his car keys. Thus seen as criminal. Reverse. Thus seen as colonizer. The big fail in this comparison I'm making is the power dynamic. The misinterpreted colonizer isn't going to be arrested. But then, even I (light-skinned as I am) have been taunted for my whiteness in black neighborhoods where I am perceived as threat, they not knowing who I was, how I think. Me not correcting them as it wouldn't have solved the root of the issue. I was taunted, but understand taunting can become violent or initiated as violent. And white bodies in black neighborhoods should not bear the brunt of racism and fear as black bodies in white neighborhoods should not bear the brunt of racism and fear.

Moving to Q&A, I don't remember the question, but Eve Mosher's response brought me back to Raw Fiction. "Empowerment." One of Raw Fiction's goals is to think critically about youth organizations and a lot of the imperialistic language around them. Empowerment is a word I've avoid instinctively but perhaps not knowing why. Perhaps it has even accidentally inserted itself before being deleted again, for no consciously investigated reason. Eve gave me the reason. It's this idea of providing tools to the public so they can take power. That's exactly what Raw Fiction is about. I am not trying to empower anyone, I am trying to provide a space in which a young person can acquire tools and thus take the power for themselves, as defined by themselves.

Last question of the panel was concerned with self-indulgence over actually doing anything. Okay, the questioner puts it, I enjoy the walk, the participation but then what good does that do? "All moments inform something else," Eve says, completely rejecting the idea that forms of active, engaged participation could do anything but inspire positive vibrations in future endeavors.

Christian concluded in his signature way, so I listened closely and took notes with extra intention to not get lost in his voice and manner of speaking that invite thought tangents to the highest mountaintops, he said: and I misquote/abbreviate: "radical self-indulgence as resistance to ideology that clings to the concept of the impossibility to change anything anyway." He understood the questioner's concern for self-indulgence in play but took her idea of self-indulgence and made it radical and therefore dedicated to change and resistance against commonly held beliefs of self-indulgence being inherently selfish or apathetic. I think Raw Fiction can stand by that, too. We're here to have fun and make the world a better place while we're at it.