Keg de Souza & Zanny Begg
Widely exhibited locally and internationally, You Are Here cleverly present their political work accessibly and playfully. Projects by the collaborative duo are non-medium specific; Emeraldtown is a sum of parts, community interactions, documentary, event and gallery-based installation. The installation at Artspace directs the viewer’s path, beginning with the oversized golden vault door, fixed ajar, that leads one into a darkened room featuring a video projection and light sculptures. The video projection shows the artists’ intervention, ReMake Estate, in which one of the many abandoned houses in the American Midwest town of Gary is sealed off with the outside painted brightly. The artists commission a local airbrush artist to create a mural, they plant a picking garden with community members and, toward the end of their project, hold a party at the site. The video is an assemblage of this footage, interviews with Gary residents and excerpts from the 1978 Motown film ‘The Wiz’ (starring Gary’s most famous son, Michael Jackson).
Beyond the pop mash-up veneer, reasons for sustained attention to this work are apparent. The installation weaves a narrative by employing elements from the town’s past and present. Residents talk of the many reasons for their town’s notoriety. In brief, the socio-economic decline proceeded when Gary’s first African American mayor Richard G. Hatcher was elected in 1968. There was a simultaneous mass relocation of the predominantly white, affluent and middle-class population. Closure of many businesses and a steep rise in unemployment lead the town to become a one-time crime and murder capital of the US.
There are specific critical concerns for this kind of work that can be termed ‘interventionist’, ‘activist’ or ‘relational’. When a community is employed as