index/content

i started my "volunteer book" as a little black and red notebook to keep track of my schedule for the craziness volunteering introduces into my life. i had neatly listed 'Chicago Freedom School: Communiversity' and 'Chicago Humanities Festival' under the "Guide to book contents" in the crisp black and gray lines provided for me. And now it occurs to me that those indices I created -- those categorical items prescribed before the signified items came into existence -- are beginning to take on completely new meanings as i start to delve into their actual content: my participation.

conceptually speaking i would describe the chicago freedom school as a community-based human rights education organization designed to provide people (particularly high school students) a forum to learn about, discuss and do something about various human rights issues. i would describe the humanities festival as a citywide series of lectures, performances, panels, participatory exhibits, and films based on one theme: environmental awareness. i would go on to say how environmental awareness is not just about ecological concern (although it is to a large degree) but to be able to have enough presence of your own surroundings to really be able to see what's around you.

but what happens when the content of the book begins to change? the indexical signifiers prematurely imposed on the hopes for the little black and read notebook start to change meaning. the label "Chicago Freedom School", which as described above has not too much to do with me suddenly becomes relevant in my thoughts about what i should do with my time. it also reminds me of the intense amount of energy i've recently found to pursue something new, interesting, and useful.

the idea of the Chicago Humanities Festival had -- despite (or perhaps because of) my intensive academic training in the Humanities -- appeared in my mind as a great and honorable endeavor designed only for 'certain' audiences. as guilty as i feel saying that, it was hard to see how something like a Humanities Festival could really incite the real social action of people who are otherwise 'interested but don't really want to do anything about it'. i had failed to make the connection that the kind of education you get from hearing experts on a situation get together to publicly discuss the issue at hand, whatever that might be.

there's education, and then there's action. how could they ever be mutually exclusive? i'll let that one be for now.


but now to close for tonight... my "volunteer book" contains notes from two chf panels i attended this past week, and nothing i had expected when i prescripted their contents on the book's first page:

After Katrina / Emergency Preparedness and Environmental Justice
dr. iva e carruthers, constance pope, eric klinenberg, roderick hawkins, cheryl s taylor

"Technocracy transforms the hierarchical structure of information."

"When communication breaks down [reporters] can only report on what they think they see."

"Without collaboration or understanding, emergency preparedness is lip service."

"There are no pieces being put together [after Katrina]. The consequence of not addressing what happens is that the world fails to learn."

"[Each disaster] is an event. When it's processed like this, it seems that there's a beginning and an end to it."

"The problem is the numbness you get when you become a spectator to an event is that you get a false sense of security. When the event is over, when is needed is more engagement on the national and international level."

"[Directly after Katrina the whole nation wanted to know what happened]. Now, the rhetoric of reobservation [of Katrina] now sounds antiquated."

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"Disasters represent the breakdown in the normal order of things and expose injustices we otherwise ignore. They are teaching moments where we can think seriously about these conditions... It is difficult to take a critical stance..."

"Katrina is part of the grander pattern of subjecting citizens of color to hazardous conditions. ... The EPA would say the environment was ok to live in but clearly it wasn't."

"Based on the perception that African Americans are less environmentally aware and therefore less likely to respond, [a medical waste management company] chose a poor African American community to place their incinerator."

"How can we think about catastrophic events as instances that help us see those injustices? ... [After Chicago's 1995 heat wave] the city refused to hold hearings and process what went wrong. This did not become a teachable moment."

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Creative Reuse in Design
sarah black, cat chow, kevin henry, lane relya, julia cosgrove

"People piece together material as information. The program is created and everything under it is just database. You don't create things with tubes of paint anymore but you program things."

"The observation that viewers bring their subjectivity to the work [when historicizing DIY culture in terms of Conceptual Art movements] is retroactively applied in an art historical context. An author can never fully determine meaning. But in DIY [what we could call] 'the viewer' participates."

"Participatory architectures on the web ("Web 2.0") are less viewer/object related than they are economies of use and sharing."

"Art/object no longer calls for a viewer. You look at operations: programming/reprogramming."

"YouTube, etc. as a virtual space is still part of the DIY culture because you still subvert the existing culture. You can chose the media you consume rather than having it handed to you."

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"Youth culture is attuned to things they can't articulate. Now, they're surrounded by stuff..."

"Now there's a kind of nostalgia for things made by hand. So the 'vintage' tshirts you find at Urban Outfitters were made in China and made vintage for you."

"A large part of our material culture is junk."

"We build too much capacity in our artifactural environment."

"One problem for reuse as a political act is that it's not sustainable because of the time it takes to collect and make materials. A new economy must emerge."

"Our next step should be to think about whether we do, in fact, need the things we use. 'Creative reuse' will become 'Creative use'"