ThinkTank Without a Name - Meredith Warner and Jeremy Beaudry

(The following is a collaborative response by Meredith Warner and Jeremy Beaudry. Thanks to Kevin for encouraging us to contribute to an already astute and valuable discussion.)

Greetings from Philadelphia.

We'd like to contribute some very concrete examples of "critical spatial
practice" which have everything to with everyday, sustained practices
of citizen-activists/-artists working against violent instantiations
of spatial politics on several fronts via a broad range of tactics.
And this work is critical because 1) it is absolutely vital in how we
make the world we want to live in and 2) it questions, challenges,
negates the status quo. Also, appreciating Teddy's work (and other's
on this list, no doubt) with border politics and the tenuous status
of migratory peoples, we don't mean to privilege "citizen" here in
terms of any legal standing, but rather use it to describe invested,
engaged residents of the demos, however that body comes together in
common, structured spaces – er, cities.

Let's get local, shall we? The complexities of Philadelphia's
dysfunction and pathology is a history too lengthy to relate here. It
is structural, cultural, institutional, and it permeates the highest
offices of civic government down to the families on our block. This
pathology is chiefly characterized by a patronage style of governance
whereby a small (like, really small) oligarchy of elected officials,
union bosses, and heads of quasi-governmental development
corporations summarily implement their own agendas to the complete
exclusion of any meaningful public participation. (For example,
witness the Penn's Landing Corporation which owns a large chunk of
Philly's central riverfront property. It's funded by taxpayers, yet
decides in its secret board meetings how public land is to be
developed.) The polis is repeatedly divided and pitted against itself
in competition for the favours of this powerful elite. Consensus is
systematically undercut, or falsely represented. There is also a
strong sense of identification between Philadelphians as victims with
their victimizers, resulting in an unhealthy deference to authority.
Agency is an attribute unfamiliar to many of our fellow citizens.
Repeatedly we see those in the citizenry who have power or the
capacity to build power fail to use it or recognize it.

In the past few years, the problems inherent in the political climate
just described have really come to a head around issues of large-
scale urban land development, particularly along Philadelphia's
central Delaware Riverfront, which contains immense parcels of post-
industrial land that has sat vacant for the previous 2-3 decades.
It's the familiar story of the post-industrial city re-branding
itself as the new mecca of the leisure / creative class and all the
expected accoutrements: condo towers, grand destination tourist
attractions, instrumentalised arts and culture entertainments, quaint
beautification, escalated gentrification... it's the neoliberal city
and it's magnificent! It goes without saying that this is all to the
enrichment of the aforementioned cabal and to the exclusion of most
Philadelphians. The disenfranchisement of citizens from any
legitimate process that might enable self-determination has recently
been exemplified by Pennsylvania's recent foray into legalized, state-
sanctioned (and subsidized) gambling on a scale and speed that is
really unprecedented (e.g. two 5,000 machine slots parlour casinos
planned for the riverfront adjacent to residential neighbourhoods).
The fix has been in all along – from the passage of the gambling
legislation in the middle of the night on July 4th weekend in 2004 to
repeated state supreme court decisions that uphold gambling interests
to the cosy alliances between elected officials, casino developers,
and so-called regulators who stand to make billions.

What a gift we've been given! (And we're only being partly
facetious.) This casino clusterfuck has in fact mobilized hundreds
across the city and served as a first trial by fire for many who had
maybe not been paying attention nor ever considered themselves as
activists. What started as small clusters of neighbours self-
organizing in living rooms and barrooms in their respective
communities to oppose this unsanctioned development on the riverfront
evolved into city-wide networks of community activists and also
expanded to embrace other development-related issues like eminent
domain, gentrification and displacement, zoning code reform,
accessible public lands, environmental protections and remediation,
and open and transparent governance. The reckless process that
ushered in these planned casinos is symptomatic of Philadelphia's
(and Pennsylvania's) deep structural corruption. And more than that:
it is symptomatic of the fractures that follow from neoliberal
policies that our civic institutions have normalized.

It is this structural corruption, these egregious acts that together
we meet head-on. And there is no doubt in our mind, or in the minds
on our collaborators, that this is a battle. As Markus describes, "In
war, enemy and adversary usually hold territory, which they can gain
or lose, while each has a spokesman or authority that can govern,
submit or collapse." This is certainly the space we find ourselves
operating in. We bind ourselves to this language of war because the
acts taken by the state to determine our future are, by their nature,
violent. It is structural violence, implemented by the state, to
slowly strip the rights of the people to participate freely in a
decision-making process about their environment and futures.

Returning to Kevin's question: "But are the military metaphors for
our response really necessary, and how do they function here?" Yes,
they are necessary -- because of the very violent nature of conflict
itself. War is conflict, and through conflict within the context of
participation, change occurs. Ultimately Markus specifically
clarifies what participation looks like by referring to it as
"conflictual participation," which is more descriptive of the kind of
participation that we have experienced as activists in Philadelphia,
and that we believe produces change. Linking these words "conflict"
and "participation" seems obvious to us because without conflict,
participation is rendered impotent. To quote Markus again, "When
humans assemble, spatial conflicts arise." In our experience, the
absence of conflict within the forum of participation is a warning
that participation is not actually occurring at all. Red flags go up!

When we insert ourselves into a space of conflict, we often think
about thick and thin experiences of participation, or even the very
notion of participatory democracy (thinking here of how that is
defined in the Port Huron Statement). In our experience, thick
participation occurs within smaller, more organically formed settings
that have yet to coalesce into institutions. In these settings, there
is usually no funding, no major backer, no particular political
support – not to mention, these organizations are usually run by an
all volunteer force that is very localized. Any romantic notion of
cooperation (collaboration that happens with ease) is quickly
dispelled by the level of conflict within the group. Thick
participation is much like "conflictual participation": it is mired
in conflict; it is a slow, dirty trek through a thick slough with
boots on that keep getting stuck. Although compromises and
resolutions are part of the process, we have yet to see thick
participation within a particular conflict come to a definitive end;
it is either just that slow, or we have not been around long enough
to experience it. What we are more inclined to believe is, rather,
that thick participation does not end. It is a continual process that
may require considerable entrenchment and longevity.

Conversely, settings for thin participation are organized by large,
powerful institutions like cities, universities, large non-profits,
and mainstream media outlets. These forums are generally marked by
narrowly framed problems, convoluted processes for citizen
involvement, pre-established controls which to limit the outcome of
the participation, and the careful crafting of outcomes that
ultimately benefits the institutions. Conveniently for you, busy
Citizen, you need only show up on the appointed time, where we will
feed you pizza and let you pick between choice A and choice B.
Neither will you really find acceptable, but that is the price you
pay for convenience! Thin participation is fast; your involvement in
it is scant and has a defined end after which the institution "takes
the reins" so you can get back to your busy life. Thin participation
is simply the veil of participatory democracy, a way for institutions
to create forums for public input that ultimately legitimize projects
whose outcomes have already been determined. In our experience in
Philadelphia with organizing and advocating for citizen input and
control in the development of the riverfront and in our
neighborhoods, those in power that would do as they please rely in
large part on tacit consent of citizens. (Well, to over simplify,
democratic governments in general rely on tacit consent.) That is why
thin participation is so insidious: via sham processes of
participation, tacit consent is codified and reinscribed as explicit
consent, the collective will of the people.

Our concern here is to develop some workable understanding of
"critical spatial practice" from a purposefully contextualised
perspective. Significantly, as we engaged in activist work, our work
as artists changed too. The walls we had maintained around the
citadel of Art were useless, even harmful, certainly false, and only
enabling a scenario that Christiane accurately bemoans: "One could
easily consider that the role of the artist has now melded with that
of the court jester in our privatized realms." (Stallabrass' "Art
Incorporated" has been helpful to us in this regard as well.) So a
handful of us who are artists and had cut our teeth together "in the
trenches" of this activist work in Philly formed a collaborative
group called the Think Tank that has yet to be named (http://
thinktank.boxwith.com/) because we understand firsthand the
experience of "conflictual participation" that is essential to
participatory democracy and working for change. But we also believe
(selfishly?) that the language(s) of art has the power to open up
spaces for meaningful discourse, critical consciousness, (dare I say
it?) redemption, and perhaps even Kevin's "ethics of plenitude."

The Think Tank formed around the recognition of a single phenomenon
that we see present in each of the organizations or institutions we
work in as activists: the presence of the "neutral" voice. The
neutral voice is the voice of one who assumes some position of power
in a group (usually the "benign" mediator/facilitator), but refuses
to lead, or acknowledge his power. The neutral voice plays both sides
of the field as it suits his own purpose, which is to remain a
central figure in the process. The neutral voice often impedes upon
any progress that might be made because the neutral voice avoids
conflict. But the neutral voice is never neutral; he promotes his
agenda through a series of indiscernible nudges rather than through
outright leadership. In the participatory processes we are involved
with this neutral voice is omnipresent.

This epidemic of neutrality informed the way in which the Think Tank
organized itself. Each member (a word we use cautiously, though have
no replacement for) self-appoints his own distinct Directorship. A
Director's title exposes biases, revealing the Director's position in
the context of an investigation. So we immediately declared our own
respective agendas and made it a prerequisite of participation that
any other self-appointed Directors do so as well.

One of the forms we created was the Publicly Held Private Meeting
(PHPM). These are performative and collaborative site-specific
interventions, and a format that we have used frequently in our
investigations of contemporary urban issues in Philadelphia. Living,
working, and organizing in Philadelphia, we rely on an intimate
knowledge of the city in order to initiate and faciliate these
dialogical projects. This knowledge is often gained over time through
research, observation, and by virtue of simply sharing and
negotiating space with others.

In these investigations we are also careful to implicate ourselves as
artists, if necessary. For example: the current Directors all live in
or around a gentrifying neighborhood in Philadelphia called Fishtown.
In addition to the claimed "organic" process whereby artists are
"pioneers" in the process of gentrification, there is also a formal
mandate by the City of Philadelphia to transform the neighborhood of
Fishtown into an "arts corridor." So whether we came here because it
was affordable, or because there were other artists we knew here,
does not matter. We are implicated in the process, and it is certain
that our presence will be used by the city to further its project
(here we are back at the neoliberal city). So the investigation that
occurs during a PHPM is understood through the exposure of each
Director's agenda via their title, but also through the implication
of our presence in this neighborhood as both newcomers and artists.
Teddy writes, "Since when are we all not implicated in the power
structure?" The Directors understand this question and use self-
exposure as an attempt not to diffuse power but to acknowledge and
make visible the power and privilege we each wield and benefit from.

As activists, Teddy's conception of "critical proximity" describes
our point of entry into situations and institutions where we engage
directly with "conflictual participation," where we challenge power
head on, where we expose the "power inscribed on the territory." But
this notion of "critical proximity" is also employed in our art
practice, via our Directorships, to dissect the structure of power
and the ways in which institutions manage space and populations. By
examining spatial issues in a PHPM, at the site of contention, via a
model of self-exposure, we hope to generate constructive dialogue
that might bring to light new forms of action. But we also hope that
our physical occupation of a site, and our engagements with those on
or near the site, might create a spatial and psychic tear that
exposes the very structures that orchestrate spatial injustice.
Occupying the space in between our art and activist practices, we
have found these onsite conversations, the PHPM, instrumental in
reciprocally illuminating the strengths and weaknesses of each
practice taken on its own. Perhaps, ultimately, art and activist
practices need not be fully integrated, but exist, too, in "critical
proximity" to one another so that we might create "counter procedures
that can generate new models of possibility."

Best.

Meredith Warner, Director of the Dept. for the Investigation of
Failure (DIF)
Jeremy Beaudry, Director of the Dept. for the Investigation of
Meaning (DIM)

We are founding members of a grass-roots community planning
organization called NABR (http://nabrhood.org) and Directors of the
Think Tank that has yet to be named (http://thinktank.boxwith.com/).

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