"I STILL DON'T GET IT:
WHY DO THEY WANT TO BE RICH WITHOUT US?"
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This project started as a memorial to a housing complex, which was demolished
a few years ago. Four hundred people were forced out. At that time Gwylene
fabricated "SHOREVIEW", described by Neill Bogan as
"a monumental remembrance of a destroyed low-income housing complex doomed
by its million-dollar marshward 'viewshed'." Reflections on Evoking
History: Listening Across Cultures and Communities, Spoleto Festival USA,
2001, curated by Mary Jane Jacob.
Gwylene made 60 plaster cast houses bearing pictures of the demolition and
written comments gathered from the last inhabitants. Plaster casts stood on
a 7'x17' enlarged old aerial map of the area.
For a year or so, SHOREVIEW became an empty field where a few protected live
oaks were desperately trying to survive. Then a trailer appeared, the name
of the area was changed to LONGBOROUGH. Construction started. Prices were
advertised, starting at $85,000 per lot and $450,000 for the house. Today
the site is almost entirely built. SHOREVIEW represents gentrification: total
transformation of race and culture. We call that a bleaching of our neighborhood,
with all the pains, burns and awful smells of overdose.
"Five years ago, the model I made was bringing instant, very present,
actual memory to many Charlestonians. Then it showed something of the past.
I knew that art objects as memorials need to remain active. They can enter
art history and history as dead beats, therefore at best as a reference, at
worst as a nuisance. I could not accept that for a memorial I took responsibility
for. That is how I started to see the sixty small plaster houses as part of
the new constructions on the site, enshrined into clear cast and colored rubber
models of the new structures of Longsborough. Then, maybe the memory of a
past will remain in the new shelters as a necessary ghost. Also it seems that
it would show the process of demolition and construction in such a way that
it may become a memorial to gentrification itself, therefore potentially generating
more thoughts and discussions than just SHOREVIEW at the end of my street."
Practically this project keeps the ghosts of SHOREVIEW – that is the
plaster houses with pictures of the demolition and texts by the last residents
- embedded into the new houses of LOHGBOROUGH.
Jean-Marie then envisioned an installation, which consists of three independent
structures built around the "Shoreview" project. Structure 1 is
a 6X8X12 (H) blow up of a building in which people see parts of the now destroyed
Shoreview neighborhood. Structure 2 consists of an eye level, table top-like
surface carrying most of the resin casts of Gwylène's models of Shoreview’s
(now Longborough) as the new houses "digest" the old ones. Structure
3 is a dumpster, in which, if one climbs a stepladder to peek, one sees one
of Shoreview’s old structures, ready to be sent to the landfill.
A first presentation happened at the CITY GALLERY AT WATERFRONT PARK, Charleston
SC, part of a show curated by Colin Quashie, "The
Changing Face of Charleston”, February 2007.
The following statement accompanied the presentation.
I STILL DON”T GET IT:
WHY DO THEY WANT TO BE RICH WITHOUT US?
WHO ARE YOU?
WHAT DO YOU LIKE VERY MUCH HERE?
ISN’T IT BEAUTIFUL?
DO YOU REMEMBER SHOREVIEW?
DO YOU REMEMBER THE ICE CREAM TRUCK?
HAVE YOU READ MUHAMMAD YUNUS, THE 2006 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE?
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
If you have answered YES or had any positive reactions to all questions, congratulations.
We want to reach you.
jemagwga@knology.net
This work was partly funded by Alternate ROOTS & the FORD Foundation and
presented at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park in Charleston SC in February
2007.