Beating the Bounds

artists' forum 5.31.08

Last Saturday we had an artists' forum for all of the artists working on the rail project.  "Artists' forum" is a fancy way of saying that we all got together and took turns presenting our work, and asking questions about one another's process, as well as the future of the project.  Some photos:

this would be me, setting up images on the projector.  (also, please be impressed that i finally figured out how to post normal-sized photos.)

we did a lot of listening, mostly because people's work was so thoughtful and fascinating.  this is evan, my walking partner from earlier posts, whose work will be hanging in the RAIL SHOW OPENING THURSDAY JUNE 12 IN DAVIS, 7PM AT THE LOG CABIN GALLERY ON 1ST AND F STREETS. 

we also, apparently, were amused by one another

susan's work is digital prints, gorgeous images from the edges of the rail, taken apart and put back together, layered in a really amazing translucent way.  this excites me.

steven's work can be found at "to make" -- he does maps as wells as prints and photos.  at the RAIL show, he will be hanging a huge grid of 72 railroad ties that he photographed.  i really like the text that goes with them:

Six feet more or less above sea level, north latitude 37.85326766967773, west longitude 122.2965316772461, one-thirty in the afternoon local time [9 min.slow], through an open gate at the end of heintz avenue. sound of the wind in the eucalyptus trees. the interstate-rushing-cars in a hurry. trains take two minutes fifteen seconds to pass at nine minute intervals. the sun blue. the air sixty-three degrees. fifty-four percent humidity. the dew point at forty-four. a light breeze four to six knots._Amtrak outbound to

Sacramento

. Amtrak inbound to

Oakland

. two old lines left to decompose. two shinny in use. railroad time. two men in the bushes off the side; a blow job. a couple fucking on the side tracks._graffiti. a pillow unfolding feathers. used condoms. the blue sky. a shrine to a death. fences, walls, barriers. corridor of sound-movement-information-steel. one foot eight inches between the ties. nine inches wide. seven inches thick. eight and one-half feet long. the rail twoand three quarters an inch wide. the strange otherness of darkness in these places so nearby to us. between crossings a forbidden zone.

monica read us poems, but also talked about freight hopping when she was a teenager.  she will be reading her poems at the opening.  she also talked about how this show should migrate to the california rail museum in sacramento.  i can't say i disagree.

moe beitiks' work is performance based.  she got the folks at the wood street train station in west oakland to let her come do site-based performance art in their space, and her friend lia walker took photos.  moe has a super wry sense of humor, and these photos are really stark and also funny.

dan's photos were posted in an earlier blog post, but at the forum he showed  us his 8x10 contact prints, which are super detailed and  bright.  those will be hanging in davis too.

the cool thing about the forum in general was how much people either knew or found out about their sites for this work.  that theoretical, technical and historical knowledge is not only rad to hear about, but also makes the displayed work so much richer.  the only thing i would have done differently is made it part of some sort of bigger symposium so more people could see the amazing stuff that is going on, and hear about the creative process.

artist links

three artists have posted work, which i will now share with you.

steven holloway is a cartographer and printmaker from berkeley.  he is one of the first people to come on to the project.  he recently did a series of photos about railroad ties that you can check out here.

susan wolf, also a berkeley artist, who came on at the same time as steven sent met this photo that combines images by the railroad with old hobo symbols:
 

dan cheek sent me these photos he took with his 8x10 camera:

stay tuned.  opening june 12 in davis!

thesis shmesis

i turned in a draft of my thesis yesterday.  75 pages.  utterly incomplete.  but if you want to read or comment on the work in process, lemme know.

in other news, the opening for the rail show will be on june 12 in davis, and the day of learning will be on may 31 or june 1 in oakland.

shout at me if you have questions or want to be involved.

today was really excellent.

First, the issue of continuing the project: i have decided, for the
meantime, to stop walking. this is more than anything because i have a
thesis to write (remember?) and i was so focused on walking that my
timeline got past me. this is generally a problem of the school schedule
vs. the rest of the world, but i also took getting busted as a sign. i
have what i am going to get from walking for now, and perhaps i will
continue later. i hope this doesn't disappoint anyone. oh, and i'm going to take a few site visits to some spots of particular interest in the next few weeks.

But today was really fantastic.  i went out art-making with daniel cheek, one of the artists for this project.  Mostly I have found folks by sending out calls for artists, but I must have found Daniel when I was looking for Martinez artists because he used to do work on Martinez (and Benicia) and the oil refineries there.  He told me that his work is largely about things that are not native, things that struggle to survive in the landscape.  This exceptional landscape was part of his attraction to the project.  Oh, and he likes choo-choos.

Dan shoots with an 8x10 camera, which I'd never seen in person before.  It looks like this:

all old-fashioned like, with the  big adjustable bellows-y part.  And a black cloth for putting over your head to see the image.

The way it works (which I didn't know until today) is that the film itself is 8"x10" and that's why the whole camera is so awesomely huge.  It's also what makes the images come out in really beautiful detail.  Also, you see the image in the viewfinder upsidedown and backwards!  So the whole idea of finding the image is, I think, really different. 

So we started off in Emeryville, on the walkway above the tracks.  I hadn't really thought about the "up" dimension so much before, so that was the first way that having someone new around totally challenged my perspective on the tracks.  It's actually a pretty cool spot.

Most curious to me was a man up on the landing who was there with a digital camera and a walkie-talkied.  He's a train-watcher.  He goes up there about once a week and watches for trains, and then catalogs the ones he's seen in a scrapbook.  Like a birdwatcher.  Once again, people love trains.  And I want to know why.   

Also, I find this fascinating.  It makes me wish that as part of my fieldwork I had gone out more often, even when I wasn't walking, just to spend time by the tracks.  I bet I would have found lots of people doing interesting things.  (In fact, this was another situationist stunt, a contrast to the derive -- they would just hang out someplace like a train station all day long just to see what would happen.)

Also, Dan and I had been talking about how he got interested in this project, how he was really into trains as a kid, Lionel set and everything.  I asked him why children love trains so much --  "I don't know," he said "maybe because they're big and powerful." 

It takes Dan a while to set up each shot, which is also interesting.  So we chatted a lot.  And waited for trains.

They're really different passing beneath.  Really beautiful to watch.  The landscape is different.

We crossed over to an older pedestrian bridge and shot from there too.

We also had an interesting conversation about what it means to curate something like this.  Because I have never curated, nor taken any instruction in doing so, I'm sorta' flying by the seat of my pants.  I have secured a place for the show, though I could use a few more artists.  Anyone know artists in Richmond?

In any case, the real meat of the conversation was about race in the art world.  How I am working with mostly white artists, none of whom I fault for being white artists, but how I might do things so that wouldn't be the case in the future.  It's a tough one, particularly when you're sending out calls for artists and just hoping someone responds.  He works in an art gallery, and describes the same problem.  I would really like to open up the conversation on this topic.

Next stop, Emeryville's Shellmound street.  This is a particularly interesting and problematic place, as it was a Native American burial ground and now it's a mall.  There has been some uproar about it over the years, but the economic interests won out.  And it's certainly one of many spots like this in California.

We went up on top of a parking garage to shoot, once again up.  So much new perspective.  I also found this hole in the fence to the tracks:

Holes like these are definitely a "type," a category.

Then we left E-ville, and off to the Oakland station by Jack London square.  It took a while to find a shot, but eventually Dan got the station with a train and a car and some condos, and and and... The thing about a large-format camera is that you're able to shoot so much in one image. 

And while Dan was setting up a shot, I got to take a photo of myself in the reflection of his viewfinder.  :)

I also noticed this sign.  (It's worth clicking to enlarge.)

Funny, this drive for 'placemaking' in cities.  When the area was just waterfront warehouses, it wasn't a district with special signs.  When the warehouses are converted into fancy apartments, however...

In my neighborhood (Temescal) I was just told in a neighborhood newsletter how we feel more like this is a place because there are flags on the lampposts identifying the neighborhood.  I didn't notice the flags.  And I moved here because I like the *feel* of the place... not the idea of a feel.  Certainly an interesting problem. 

So last photo.  (Dan can only carry around so much of this film at once -- each one comes in a heavy folder.)  We had seen these carts at the station earlier, an object of total fascination for me.  Like they re-built everything but kept these. 

I love them.

The last stop of the day after we ran out of film was the cemetary in Piedmont, right near my house.  I was surprised I had never been there. It's really pretty amazing.  Dan showed me this grave:

It belonged to Charles Crocker, one of the railroad robber barons.   At once interesting and a reminder that I don't know as much about railroad history as perhaps I should or would like to.  That has taken a definite backseat to the other work I've been up to.  And the reading I do never even feels done. 

bordering project

 

Blogging is certainly imperfect for sites that are quasi-legal. But I was heartened to find that a similar project, Bordering also posted a blog. Bordering was a project by Holly McLaren, a doctoral student at the

University

of

London

, who was also interrogating a particular landscape (in her case, the English/Welsh border) through collaboration and curation with artists. Rather than post her raw field notes, McLaren used the blog as a place to comment on the proces of the work, as well as to link to different parts of her project.  

PROJECT STOPPED BY UNION PACIFIC

Today in class our department administrator pulled me out and told me to bring my stuff. This had never happened to me in my life, and I was pretty scared of what she was about to tell me. In the hallway, she tells me that a police officer from Union Pacific (the owners of the railroad) had contacted her about my project. This, a day after it had been posted on www.boingboing.net and I had gotten so many cool responses from people all over the world.

 

So I called the officer back, and he was really nice and polite. He said they weren’t pressing charges, they just wanted me to stop. For him, this was an issue of safety (a problem that I had also cited in the ethical discussion of the work in my own notes.) He told me that there is an accident somewhere on the railroad every 90 minutes, especially because ambient noise makes it so that the train is hard to hear. His job, he said, is to look out for the conductors of the trains, and that he has had to do investigations of train crashes himself. And for anyone who has ever driven a train that hit someone, it sticks with them for the rest of their life. I can’t argue with that.

 

Furthermore, Penal Code 3699 cites railroad tresspassing as a misdemeanor. 

 

Most of all, these folks are concerned with safety, and they don’t want me opening doors to put other people in unsafe situations. Fair enough. So just to let y’all know, the railroad margin is 50’ – 100’ depending on the place, sometimes marked by fences, but sometimes not. For the record, I am no longer walking by the tracks for this project.

 

The best part of our conversation, by far, however, was when I asked him how he found the project. “One of our techies back in

Omaha

found it,” he replied. [Ed: perhaps he found it on boingboing?] And then he said, “Can I ask you a question? Why would you do this?” I told him I was curious.

 

So does the project end here? Not sure. I have the choice to walk on roads parallel to the tracks. More on this soon.

 

 

into the delta

I had mentioned in the last post about Martinez that there was a part of the rail I really couldn't get at.  This is ok for the purposes of this project, because I'm more interested in the places where there is *life* by the rails, and the part I couldn't walk was mostly refineries, and then a drawbridge (!) and then some more track where there just wasn't enough room to get out of the way of a passing train without rolling down a steep grade.  Sounds dangerous, right?  That's why I'm not doing it.

So instead, Evan and I started this walk underneath the trestle where we couldn't walk.  This part put us next to the steelworker's union and training program that I've seen from the train:

There are some de-commissioned tracks down there, as there are in many places:

But way more interesting (at least visually) are the old trellises themselves:

Evan really liked it here and took lots of photos (hopefully he'll upload and send them soon.)

There was more life here than I thought, too.  Lots of cars going by, and also this hang-out spot with grafitti:

After this, we got back in the car and drove up to a spot where i thought we could cross in a light industrial area.  Lots of really nondescript buildings with signs like this:

We walked around to the other side, and tried to get near the tracks, but there were big, wet drainage ditches between.

You may, however, notice, that there are some big ships in the background of this photo.  This is the famed "mothball fleet" of navy ships that are out of use, and just sit in the bay.  I have heard it said that they leech toxic chemicals into the water, which I don't doubt but also don't have documentation for it.  In any case, they are huge and fascinating, and we wanted to get closer.

In any case, we had to turn back and go farther down the road to find a spot to cross.  Of particular interest to us was this huge pile of containers:

and this port-a-john storage lot:

Eventually, Evan found a spot for us to cross (he being braver than I, especially because there is nothing I find so repulsive as wet shoes.)

[Then we played the fun photo game of taking photos of one another at the same time.  Aforementioned question from earlier post: if it's fun, is it research?  Guy Debord and the Situationists would certainly say 'yes,' for the record.]

Until a few weeks ago, I thought that what I saw from the train was all mushy wetland.  But a friend in my program, Aubrey, is a research assistant on a project about fishing in the Delta and she did a presentation with maps in which I realized that the Delta is really a series of channels and "islands," some of which are submerged during certain times of year.  So there's a lot more dry land than I had imagined.

Also, one of the engineers I spoke to some time ago had told me that the rail was run through the wetland because it was a straight line into the central valley from Contra Costa county, but that the weight of the rail and the accompanying crushed rock was causing it to sink, making it so they had to periodically add more fill to keep the rail above water making it heavier and so forth...

There is a particularly lot of crushed rock here, a quality which I never thought I would be able to distinguish between one track and the next:

Back to the photos in a moment (of which there are many) but I'd like to also reflect on the sense experience of the rail this particular time.  As I get closer to actually compiling this material into a thesis, I think a lot about the place of the body in research.  Lots of research, esp. in the social sciences, can be done through secondary data sets, and because many researchers are somewhat lazy, they never go out into the field at all.  I find this to be a shame, because I believe that education is about being with the world in the world, and from there trying to make some sense.  The body is integral to this process, as are emotions, yet many disciplines are still obsessed with what goes on in our heads -- I think a lot about how to transform academic practice and performance to challenge this problem.

This leads me back to the particular senses I was noticing on this day of walking, those being temparature (which shifted quickly, esp. when the wind picked up or the sun came out), and my sense of smell.  There is a very familiar smell to me at this point of creosote and crushed rock, which is all rail everywhere.  But also the wetlands smell strongly of things decomposing, and sometimes this was mixed with whatever is coming out of the refineries and industrial spots all around.

Ok, so we crossed the ditch and started walking, when this freight train passed us:

Looking around, I thought this probably wasn't a place where many people hung out.  This was behind us:

and nothing much else.

But then I found this log laid down as a footbridge, and I became curious again:

Then we spotted this oil drum -- Evan tells me there's fresh wood in there, waiting for a fire to be lit:

This one was on its side in the field of tall grass.

Evan couldn't get enough -- he climbed inside and was shooting for a long time.

From here you could also get a good view of the auto bridge, and the old railroad drawbridge:

But I found the fennel much more lovely.

This would seem inconsequential, except for that it brings up the issue of how what we like affects what we see.  That there is fennel growing by the tracks is as much a part of the scene as anything, but how is this indicative of what gets documented??  How does the researcher's (my) aesthetic affect what is here??  Big question.

So we kept walking, and came across this path, which we figured was a truck road out to the ships.  We headed straight out on it.

This path is in some use, we thought, as it is paved wth crushed rock.

Next to it runs a long, straight channel, a canal dug by humans.

Still, I was surprised to see crushed reeds and other signs of people spending time here.

As it turns out, the path doesn't go all the way to the boats.  It ends in a clearing (no pics! oops!), and as
e were standing there, I felt all of the sudden really strange and sad.  A pretty indescribable wave of emotion.  Not sure how to account for it, except to report it.

Lefevbre (1974) - one of my favorite theoreticians as of late - does account for this somewhat:

"... in every society, absolute space assumes meanings addressed not to the intellect but to the body, meanings conveyed by threats, by sanctions, by a continual putting-to-the-test of the emotions."

At that point, we turned around, and on the way back we found this boat tied up in the reeds.

I should no longer be surprised that people use these marginal spaces all the time, that secrets are kept in spaces where people don't often come close, but I am still amazed.  I also think about the ethical problem here, of uncovering someone's spot and posting it on the internet (though it would certainly take some doing for a reader to find it.) 

We got back to the tracks and kept walking, when I heard the sound of water rushing.  It was coming from some sort of pipe, pumping water from an unknown source out into the bay.

I can't decide if I find this more or less creepy than the big pools of water near the refinery that were being pumped into the bay, of which I *do* know the source.

Soon we came up on some birds - I think they were swans, but also possibly egrets - and I got some pics of them as they flew off.

The birds were actually a real point of interest in walking through the delta when I thought of this project.  Perhaps in an upcoming walk, I will get out on the path early enough to see them in the earlymorning when they are more active and visible.

Here is a path beside the rail, though I am getting to thinking that what I thought of as human paths for a long time are really just the line where they dump the crushed rock.

At this point, we were also closer to the ships -- they are massive.

On the other side are rows and rows of these boxy buildings.  From the train, I mostly ignore them and look at the birds.  On foot, they seem bigger and eerier.

I told Evan that these semi trailers up against this building seem to be nursing from it.  Then, feeling particularly pleased with my own analogy, took a black and white photo to back it up.

This little bridge had fiber optic cable posts all around it.

I have mentioned that railroad right-of-ways often become the tracks for other pathways too. Sociologist Bruno Latour discusses this at length in his  website, Paris: Invisible City.  I will probably dedicate some airtime to it in my thesis as well.

These petroleum pipeline signs were everywhere too.

I wonder about what we are led to believe about "national security" and "code orange" when petroleum pipelines are so easy to just get to.

More vernacular use here:

(This shell will become more important later.)

Here, Even kneels down to listen to the tracks after a freight train has passed by.  It's this really subtle high pitch, which I imagine has to do with the way the train wheels make the tracks vibrate.

Looking back towards the warehouses, I wondered about this siren (center of photo.)  Later in the day, we would see it more up-close and I still couldn't tell what it was specifically for.

This fence was submerged underwater -- in fact, there were lots of wierd fences along the way. 

Wierd in that we really couldn't tell who they were meant to keep in or out.

And this cactus fence (behind the chain link fence) is what you tend to see in Central and South America.

Here is a long piece of rail -- a soon replacement maybe?

In the backyard of this warehouse was the Benicia Lions club trailer

A man working in that yard spotted us and said hi.  It continually amazes me how friendly people are, and how they almost never ask what I'm doing by the tracks or how I got to (the often odd place) where I'm standing.  He told us that the trailer comes out for parties and such. 

We walked on.

Throughout the walk, we remained fascinated with the ships.  No good way to get close, but they just loom over the landscape when you're walking in a way that they don't from the train.

Next  we came up on a road that crosses the tracks. 

This was reassuring because though I had seen it on the google map, we didn't have a copy with us.  In fact, the Rand-McNally map that I had with me had an inlay of a different map in just the place where we were walking because it is *so* inconsequential on a road map.  And though I know that maps are constantly imperfect representations, issues like this don't ever stop provoking my curiosity.

Just the other side of the road was the Grizzly Island wildlife area, fenced off with barbed wire, and controlled by the department of fish and game.

This house was also nearby -- I wonder if it is related to the Grizzly Island preserve, or to the ships.

This road led straight out to the ships, but we were pretty sure we weren't invited.

At this point, it also became clear that Evan and I had different ideas of what we should and shouldn't do.  I was interested in marching right up to the house (and others we would see) and introducing myself and chatting with the people there; he was not.  Evan, however, wanted to climb on the freight cars stopped on the tracks (forthcoming) and I wanted nothing to do with them.

I also got to thinking about the extent to which the rail opened this area up for development.  Behind us were these warehouses with a big empty lot between.  These three photos give an idea of how big the space is.

Looking at the land, it seems quite like the rest of the delta in the parts where it hasn't been built up.  So is this lot empty because the land is expensive?  Or is it simply difficult (soft, sinking) land to build upon??  On the way back, the view made it even more apparent how strange it is to put industry right here.

We kept walking and found more signs of use. 

Burnt fence posts

Fast food wrappers

This platform thing

Smashed reeds

Busted furniture

This ladder

This freight train was stopped along the tracks.  It was full of cars, like automobiles.  Evan wanted to climb it, or maybe climb in it and have lunch inside.

This struck me as terrifying -- certainly as soon as we got inside, the thing would start moving and we'd be whisked off to Nebraska or something.  I still find freight cars beautiful, but I really don't have any desire to climb on them or get near them.  I guess I mostly think of trains as dangerous these days.

We also found these safety guidelines on the ground, printed on orange vinyl.

These started to show up -- some sort of mile marker?

Between the tracks and the highway, we noticed bulldozers.  Later we would find out that this is a mulch business.

What is this deck all about?

This house had me terribly curious??  When was  a house built in the middle of the delta?? By whom?? And who lives here now??

To what extent are the tracks part of the land that these people use daily?  On the other side of the tracks from their house, someone (perhaps the current occupants) had planted a palm tree and a plum tree (back to smell -- this was in full bloom and smelled fantastic.)

We sat down under the palm tree to have lunch.  This UP truck drove by, stopped, and asked us if we were ok.

Once again, noone asked how we got there, or what we were doing there.  This strikes me as strange.  Also, as a white man and woman, clearly we had some advantage in people worrying about us being there.

After lunch we kept walking and found this yucky water.

More houses by the tracks

And more birds

And more use

This building has a bunch of boats all around it.  I wonder what the people here do out in the delta.

Unfortunately, we didn't feel welcome here either.

This is actually really too bad, because from the train I was really looking forward to just walking up to these buildings and talking to folks.  This is somewhat another example of how perspective is so much shifted from the train -- the huts seem to butt up right against the tracks and invite you in.  Not so.

This road would take us up off the tracks, right by a lagoon.  Pretty, no?

But still, the property lines were unclear to me.

Does someone own this lagoon?

One more look back at the ships

This is where we stopped

And if you're interested, you can link to the google map of this walk.  Turns out it was only about 2.5 miles. It felt a lot longer.

At this rate, this walk will take longer than the time I have.  Time to hustle.  (In fact, lots of people warned me against this problem -- the scope of this project simply being too big.)

So we headed back on the road (not the highway) that runs parallel to the tracks back to the car.  I hadn't counted on this -- hot and dry and pretty boring.

It did give  a different perspective on the houses along the tracks, though.  Like this was a country road first (just parallel to the tracks.)

We did come across what seemed to me like garage sale leftovers.

Evan, being a scavenger, found this exciting.  I wanted to get back to the car.

From the road, the warehouses seemed to overwhelm the landscape.

I was pretty fascinated at these attempts at human touches on the landscape.  This warehouse is so huge and boxy, but flowering plum trees were planted just in the path where people come in and out of the building:

Then we were in a landscape one almost never walks to: the freeway on-ramp.  Evan and I were both quite curious about where this man on  a bike came from (as people must have been about where we came from!)

We figured there must be a bike laying around the warehouse where he works, and people take it up here to get lunch or go to the convenience store.

I admired some other small touches like these stump benches outside of one building.

Finally, Evan hitched us a ride for the last 1.5 miles back in a truck with a man who had a cardboard hauling business.  I was debating whether or not to include this detail here (as hitchhiking is generally thought of as unsafe, and some readers - my mother among them - might worry.)  I decided not to censor it in the end, esp. because I doubt many people read this far.  :)

The very last thing we saw, nestled in among the warehouses, was this old train car painted pink-ish.  I have seen a number of these along the way (most notably in Martinez by the train station), and my immediate tendency is to ask theoretical questions about them, along the lines of Baudrillard's "System of Objects." 

Clearly, it's just a cool thing to look at or climb on.  But its "coolness" is derived mostly from the fact that it used to serve a purpose and now it does not.  This is endlessly fascinating to me.

 

And in case you're wondering what Baudrillard thinks about this:

"The tense of the mythological object is the perfect: it is that which occurs in the present as having occurred in a former time, hence that which is founded upon itself, that which is 'authentic'."  (The System of Objects, 1968:79)

Why artists?

So the other part of this project, besides the now famous walk, is getting others to walk.  Namely artists.

I came into the program in Community Development thinking I would study Community Arts and Youth Development.  Indeed, I had even turned down an offer from Columbia College in Chicago to do a program by the same name.  As I started working, though, I realized that maybe I was more interested in *making* art in community spaces than in reading about it. 

Furthermore, I was pretty turned off by a lot of the community arts literature.  Much of it seemed either (1) too fluffy for critical me or (2) too demanding of artists -- like they ought to be at the helm of creating social change every day, and if they weren't they were being irresponsible.  Also, when folks spoke of "bringing the shamanic fire back into the community," it seemed essentializing and lame.  Artists make art, que no?

Ok, clearly it's waaaaaay more complicated than that.  But what I'm getting at is that sometimes community arts should clearly be about inspiring social change, and sometimes there should just be a place for people to get together and make boring watercolors, or simply comment on the human experience.  In fact, this is the kind of community art that quite interests me, that which I think is vital to the "ecology" of a healthy community. 

Let me explain... we know from ecosystem studies that you can't study elements of a healthy natural community in isolation -- what's really important is the system.  Like how plant health is often based on the fungus living on their roots.  So to think about community arts in the "outcomes based model" under which so many nonprofits function is often kind of useless.  There's no really good way to account for how arts make people happy and calm and fulfilled.  A few weeks ago, I went to a conference at UC-Berkeley sponsored by the Center for Community Innovation where they dealt with just this issue.  It was actually really important to hear these things articulated.

SO back to the project.  I knew that as part of "Beating the Bounds," I wanted to involve artists.  What has resulted is that I am recruiting artists from every community where there is a train station.  They go out and walk the tracks too, either alone or with me; then they use their art to comment.  So far, I have on board the following:

Steven Holloway, Berkeley: printmaker, cartographer, mapmaker.

Susan Wolf, Berkeley: printmaker, photographer.

Sally Rodriguez, Martinez:  painter

Monica Storss, Davis: poet

Joshua Short, Davis: artist of many stripes

I am still looking for artists from Emeryville, Richmond, and Suisun/Fairfield.  Lemme know if you have someone.

Also, I started talking to a tapdancer from Oakland yesterday in line at Best Buy (talking to strangers is what I do best!), so hopefully that'll happen too.

For the artists, I want them to really consider the space itself, and their experience in it.  A little nebulous, but I'm excited for the results.  Also, instead of just having an opening (in Davis!  beginning of June! be there!)  I'm also having a day of learning for faculty, students, artists and community members to come learn about the project, and share what they found out in their explorations.  June 1.  This is largely a response to the tendency for people to hand their art to a curator, maybe (or maybe not) show up to an opening, and then leave it.  I am more interested in integrating the forms of learning we have all undertaken, and in educating one another on artistic interventions such as these.

So back to the original question: why artists?  Because they see things differently.  A large part of their function in this "ecosystem" that I speak of is to see differently for the rest of us, to be "experts in imagination."  (Vaclav Havel, I think.)  So if we are really going to interrogate space, really give it the shakedown, it seems vital that they be part of this process. 

Their role in this project, therefore, is twofold: To experiment with how art/ists might be part of considering new spaces (more on the participatory design end of things), and to consider if/how "artist" and "academic" see things differently.  Also, to consider how to integrate those points of view into a meaningful whole.

 

february 5: martinez

I had known for some time that the area just past Martinez would be a problem.  Looking at it from the train, it was evident that there was little space between the tracks and the fences of the oil refineries.  And like I've said before, safety is number one on this project.  (This also means that I don't go down to the tracks at night, and as a result I certainly miss an important part of the life that goes on there.)

In any case, I figured we'd walk out of Martinez as far as we could.   Like in many cities, the tracks are fenced off in the area around the tracks for public safety.  But if you're willing to walk just a little bit farther, in this case a few blocks, the chain-link fence abruptly ends, and you're in:

[btw, I thought I had taken care of the "blue" setting on my camera, but evidently I didn't.  Sorry.]

SO in we wandered.  The tracks butt up on the other side against a park on the bay shore, with no fence at all to separate them. 

People hang out in the brush between the park and the tracks.  Sometimes they leave their garbage:

This wooden bridge led into the refinery, where we were definitely not allowed.

But with the exception of that sign caught in the  tangle of fence and brush, it was not very difficult to get close to some of the apparatus.

Evan liked it here a lot. 

But like I said, it was hard to go much further without getting in a sorta' pinched spot on the tracks.  No thank you.  So we turned around and headed to some park land on the bay.  From that distance, you can see just how close the refineries stand to people's homes:

(Local photographer Daniel Cheek has done some work on this topic.  I am trying to recruit him to be part of the RAIL show.  More on that later.)

We also happened upon this crazy martian landscape.  Some effect of standing water and drainage must have caused this.  Evan went out tromping upon it, while I took photos.

[A word on research companeros.  Evan has a pretty non-traditional work schedule, which makes him a great walking partner.  I had stated (here?  in a term paper?) that it is important to get different points of view and take out different walking partners.  I stand by that.  However, there is also something to be said for getting the work done.  This is an interesting problem in research, which I would call "things not going as planned."  Turns out it's pretty common.]

Someone sleeps here too.

From a distance, we also got a pretty good view of the bridge.  It's hard to tell in this picture, but there are actually 2 bridges, one for cars and one (a drawbridge!) for the trains.  That's the rustier one. 

I won't be allowed to walk on that bridge.  If the project were an attempt to get to school from home by walking, I'd have to go back to Crockett and take the bridge to Vallejo.

The more official part of the park has an observation deck for watching small boats in the marina and also huge industrial ships:

Evan took this photo that is the sign for a dumpster with the refinery behind it.  Clever, eh?

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching bikers play on the Martinez skate park cement, and meeting with local artist Sally Rodriguez.  She gave us some good insights about the city of Martinez, and agreed to be part of the art project!  Check out the next post for more.

january 2: crockett to martinez

what a good way to start off the new year.  i walked with a new friend, evan, from crockett to martinez. 

evan studied photography, and he just sent me the link to his photos.  (they are fantastic, particularly the sequence of a train passing by.)

unfortunately, i have not had a computer since just before xmas, so i am writing this post more from memory than perhaps i would like.  (in fact, i have heard from friends and teachers that one has 48 hours to write field notes before they start to disappear.)

[also, i forgot to switch the auto settings on my camera again, so once again more blue-tinged photos than i would like.  others have an eerily grainy quality that i like, but i still am not able to control.]

so we started walking near the c&h sugar refinery which, as i may have mentioned, was a place that inspired this walk in the first place.  the machinery there is amazing, just the sheer number of pipes and vats, and the delicious smell of burnt sugar.

 

i think i may have seen this tag on a freight car before, and though i don't usually find graffiti super interesting, i think this one is really beautiful:  

(i am also proud of this one as a photo, which is an interesting problem.  are my photos *data* or little works of art?  is there a difference?  ought there be?)

next, lots of docks broken in the bay.  these were lumber docks, i think; now they are mostly posts.

this one has a building still standing on it.  it is for sale -- we called and they told us $150,000.  that's a lot of money for a somewhat broken, ancient dock with electricity but no running water.  oh, and you can only get in (legally) by water access.  that would mean renting a slip in crockett.  and building a raft or something.

but i can still dream of having an artist residency here on the bay.

these people would be my neighbors:  

i also noticed that there are these pretty houses on the hill in crockett that face out towards the bay.  i wonder if the noise of the train bothers them, or if because they look over top of them, they have stopped noticing the noise. 

then more and more of these docks.  it gives you an idea of how much the bay was once used to haul freight (just around california.)  these tracks were a part of a system that included canals and ferries all around.

there's this thing too:

it has been left to rust for a long, long time.

this is the first walk that i had noticed dead animals by the tracks, but we saw this deer and a raccoon too, both clearly hit by the train.  (evan got me to look at them up close, which shows how much different walking partners change your perspective.)

an eerie photo, but the light that day made everything strangely beautiful:

then we came across this little park, clearly another piece of the east bay regional park district which seems to have claimed up as much land as it can around the tracks.  i think they have done a good job having their paths hug the bay and the rails -- i find this a decent compromise.

as this project has become about marginal spaces and how we use them and think about them and deal with them, this business with the park district becomes more important than one might think at first blush.

also, they left this beautiful little structure standing.  this would be a great venue for the train observation deck suggested in the last post:

so this next thing is *really* interesting.  it is a fishing dock, but with warning signs about eating fish from the bay.  it is also maintained by the regional park district, complete with a little place to cross the rails with a different warning sign (don't get hit by a train!):

more old docks.  these photos must have been on the aforementioned blue setting.  but look how dreamy:

also this tire sculpture (remember vernacular use?)

these benches also signal vernacular use. 

does their home-made-ness make them any different from park district's benches??

then to the hole-in-the-gate to my fave bay area secret: port costa.

once a super-important depot for shipping grain from contra costa county throughout california, what is left of port costa is a bar (formerly the grain warehouse)

and the building across the street (formerly a brothel, i've been told) and a bunch of beautiful houses in a pretty gully.  

a land trust owns the hills on one side, and the east bay regional parks own the other, so it remains a tiny little hidden treasure.

then more docks

railroad right-of-ways (as well as streets and other lines of travel) have often been used to lay phone, electrical, plumbing and fiber-optic connections.  i found this pretty bundle of colorful wires on the ground.

people hang out here:

i can't recall if i've blogged about this already, but there is a scholar of industrial ruins in the u.k. called tim edensor, who says that industrial ruins are really important as an out-of-the-way space for people to do outlawish things.  clearly, no city planner is going to support keeping an old crumbling unsafe warehouse standing in order to promote illicit activity.  but i still think this is an important category of space, particularly interesting because it is produced wholly by capital divestment in a place where capital was once *invested.*  the railroads are an interesting gateway into these spaces, because they certainly aren't ruins, but they do have an historic character as outlaw (hobo?) space.

on a separate note, it is *uncanny* how many people want to tell me the stories they have about hanging out by the railroad as kids.  like that's what so many of us spent our teenage years doing.  i still walk on the rails when i go back to my parents' house in michigan (and have written more than one poem about it.) 

i really like the lines in this photo:

so then we came to this machine with wires running into a railroad "carpet" (for lack of a better word.)  this is the second one of these i have seen.  it is run by a solar panel, but besides that i'm not sure what it does or how it works.

people hang out on this beach, too.  they build cairns (piles of rocks) and burn things.  sounds delightful.

how did this car get here?  there must have been a road once upon a time.  it captured evan's photographer imagination.

 

 

then there were all these pipes and signs about "property of the u.s. government." evan said maybe i shouldn't be photographing them, but if i can just walk to them on the rails, then it isn't very high security, is it?

and what travels in this pipe?  anything?

so back to the east bay regional park district -- in this bit by martinez, they own the land on the water side of the tracks!  amazing, particularly when you consider the rate at which this type of land erodes.  and "officially," you can only get in on one side, and from martinez.  but there are no fences, only these posts.

and next thing you know, we're in martinez.  i don't know what is in these tanks, but i'm guessing oil or an oil byproduct.

oh, so martinez.  a totally cute faaaaaaaaaaar east bay town.  the old houses there are worker cottages akin to the ones we saw in hercules.  this one is boarded up.

these people were all watching the city clear a beaver dam in the creek because there was a huge storm coming (and those of you who live in california experienced it the next day.)  apparently this was a big deal b/c there had been an argument brewing for some time about what to do with the beavers.  the tv crews were out and everything.

this is the martinez train station.  as my landscape professor mark francis says, you know it is post-modern architecture because it is wearing a party hat (see upper left hand corner.)

in fact, i think they did quite a lovely job with this station.  unfortunately, the old station is a costume shop with dropped acoustical tile ceilings.  i am not sure when they built the new one, or why they felt it was necessary.  my gut feeling is that a lot of towns built new stations in the last ten years to re-encourage ridership.  oakland, emeryville and richmond all have new stations.  the berkeley one was a restaurant but now sits empty.  the fancy new richmond multimodal station has been empty every time i have ridden past it.

this historic plaque gives a glimpse into martinez's past:

also, this station was on the southern pacific line, whereas up until now, i think it has been union pacific.  gotta look into that.  in any case, the town is certainly proud of its train heritage.

that's the end of that walk.  i'm a bit concerned, as i am (supposedly?) writing a draft of this thesis this term, and the walk isn't done.  if anyone wants to jump on board for the second half (in the next few weeks, please!) lemme know.

oh, and leave your comments.