INTERVIEW: Taylor Stevenson of Red Semilla Roja

Posted September 30, 2009 by icky in Interviews

The Esplanade is a narrow strip of land that lies between the Willamette River and Interstate 5 in Portland (OR). In 2001 the City of Portland remodeled this into a riverfront parkway, with some public art, a partially-floating bike/jog path, and some new boat docks. This area (near rail lines, social services, and with plenty of bridges and overpasses) has also been a long time spot for homeless camps, car campers, train hoppers, and also (of course) skate boarders & graffiti.

I put up a blog posting a couple weeks ago about a public art install, Live Debris, which occurred in this area. It was organized by the group Red Semilla Roja, and one in "a series of international events sharing reuse traditions as a means of reducing stigmas around garbage, poverty and street culture."

I went down late on a Saturday, added some art to the wheat paste wall, sat on a woven-from-garbage hammock, and looked out over the river. I then wandered back down the Esplanade and checked out all the different projects that were part of Live Debris. I was impressed and inspired by the project and interviewed Taylor Stevenson from Red Semilla Roja for the Justseeds blog via email on September 25th, 2009.

(photos taken from Live Debris website)

How did Live Debris start?

I worked for years at Outside In, a social service agency for the homeless, and they let me organize an exhibit of reuse art and craft in their lobby. I included homeless and housed artists with the idea of using art to help people overcome their stigmas about people living in vastly different situations. More than anything, though, I was trying to use art as a way to explore consumer culture and how repeatedly discarding materials may exacerbate society’s inclination to reject certain parts of society. At the time I was also making reuse art with street kids, and noticed that making something functional with discarded materials was the ultimate symbol for what so many of them want with their lives. So I decided to organize an event with the intention of integrating different communities and helping people overcome stigmas that they may have about other people, garbage and even activism. A girlfriend of mine lives in Beirut, so I visited her for 3 months and organized the first Live Debris.

Can you give us a brief rundown of some of the project in Live Debris Portland 09?

The installations: A hammock woven from plastic bailing twine and other discards. A massive glass cube representing the amount of trash that one American produces in a year, swings made from old pallets, a public paste-up wall, A big ball of barbed wire atop an overturned shopping cart, a rolling baby bunk bed, a plastic performance tent, an alter, an organized trash heap, A dandelion bench and, my favorite and the biggest pain in my butt, a small homeless house. At the opening we served free gleaned food, gave some craft workshops and held a free clothing exchange/giveaway.

Can you tell us about differences in the project in Beirut, Rio de Janeiro, and Portland? And how do you think these differences reflect on the location?

All of the projects were a series of events- clothing swaps, workshops, lectures, etc. I will talk about the final events. The final Beirut event was in a gallery in Dahiye, a Hezbullah-controlled area that some of the artists hadn’t even entered before because they felt it was so dangerous. When they came to the event, they realized how normal it was there. So despite the event being in gallery, which is not my natural inclination, it was extremely successful in getting people out of their element. The exhibition was beautiful, hugely publicized and very well attended, which felt professional and legit despite that it was a very DIY labor of love to pull off. Especially since a war broke out a month before the exhibit and I was trapped indoors for 2 weeks thinking it would all fall apart. Beirut is a consumer culture, much more so than Portland and Rio. So while I think the project did a great job planting the reuse seed in the Middle East, I was also left wondering if Live Debris was a hit because reuse is a new idea in Lebanon, and a potential new consumer trend. Or if people really got what I was trying to do.

The Brazil show was much harder. Garbage and poverty are both heavily stigmatized there and people prefer to ignore both. The final event included an exhibit of 8 works of art that were started in Portland and finished by artists in Rio. And in the streets, we had about 60 artists performing and intervening around the theme of garbage and street culture. We had a letter from the police giving us the right to do whatever, so artists did everything from hold a garbage cart race to putting up trash-related graffiti. It was wild and totally exhausting. But the success of the Brazil show was that I had 6 months instead of the three I had in Beirut, so I was able to create a community out of the artists that participated. Many of them are still collaborating today and developed new styles and techniques from the workshops and exchanges I organized there. They also really understood the social issues I was pushing because garbage and exclusion are polemic topics in Brazil. Brazil has some of the world’s best recycling rates, thanks to informal recyclers who make barely enough to survive and will likely never work another job. Their service to society is not recognized there.

In Portland, people are thinking about garbage, but don’t really understand the relationship between garbage and poverty. People living in and surviving from garbage isn’t as apparent to us as it is in other parts of the world, so the connection is harder to make here. I do think the philosophical connection, of rejecting what you feel doesn’t serve you, does apply here, though. People are very judgmental of the homeless in Portland— ignoring them because they are drug abusers, mentally ill, homeless by choice etc. People think that if someone abuses drugs, (s)he deserves to be on the streets. The reality is that the US has huge mental health and drug addiction problems and that is a societal issue not simply a personal one. Live Debris is an attempt to explore these problems of rejection and exclusion and offer people opportunities to try to understand each other.

How did this Portland event come together?

I was tired of working with galleries (in Beirut and Brazil). So I told Chris Haberman of Portland City Art that I wanted to hold an exhibit under a bridge for the homeless. He suggested the esplanade and took care of the permit for me.

What kind of reaction can you gauge from what you've done?

The public seems to enjoy the exhibit. The homeless community in the area loved it and participated as much as they could. Certain police officers were not so excited, but I think they warmed up to it after I spoke with them.

Some of the art projects were functional (like the hammock, the little house, the bunk bed) and some were aesthetically beautiful (Klutch's totem, the wheat paste, the ball of wire), and some were agitational (the imaginary cube of garbage, the garbage from the Clackamas River).... Did these cover what you wanted out of the project? Was this a group show, with individual viewpoints, centered around garbage or are these different impulses tied together?

I am very happy with the Portland installations, and especially with how well it was received by the local homeless community. For all of the Live Debris shows, I select artists who are sincere and interested in trying new things. I try to make the project as inclusive as possible, so if the installations encourage participation and are made from reused materials I believe they fit with Live Debris.

Given an unlimited amount of resources (not just money and space but also time and energy) what would you do differently (if anything)?

I would love to be able to pay all of the artists (and myself). I would choose to spend a year in each location, because I think community building is the most important catalyst for continues change. And I would hire someone to do pr!

What are you're goals with this project and do you feel like they accomplished them?

I hope that Live Debris will encourage people to try new things and engage with people from different backgrounds. Ultimately, I would like to present Live Debris as a series of experiments in conflict resolution and community building. I am still figuring out how to measure the success of such a goal, but personal accounts have convinced me that the project is working. I have gotten some really positive feedback from people involved in the project who tell me that they interact with people they wouldn’t have even spoken with before. Many of the artists have also changed to incorporate more reused materials in their work, which I think is very important. I can’t wait for trash art to become so mainstream that garbage is considered a media rather than a message. Or, rather, that garbage stops being considered garbage.

Aside from whoever-walks-by, who is your audience with this project? Does this project relate to the contemporary art world?

I knew that people from all walks would see the exhibit. But this particular event was primarily for the homeless community. I wanted to see what would happen if they were given a sense of responsibility and participation in the event, without necessarily having any hand in organizing or even constructing. I was hoping that their passive participation in the event (eating free breakfast, sleeping in the homeless house, getting free clothes, swinging on the swings, making crafts etc) would encourage them to watch over the exhibit during the week and get to know the artists participating. In the end they were quite involved. None of the installations was messed with and they even fixed one that was accidentally broken. And some of them come up and talk to me every time I visit the esplanade to check in with me about things.

The Esplanade, especially at that location with its mix of homeless camps and joggers and spandex (and especially in Portland with its draconian attitudes towards homeless- ness), is an interesting location for this kind of project. Was the specific location purposeful for that reason?

Initially I wanted to do the exhibit for the homeless and leave it at that, but now I am interested in analyzing the project in terms of how to resolve conflict between squatters and the Portland Police. What would make homeless folks feel inclined to keep their area clean and take responsibility for the space they are squatting, and how can the city of Portland responsibly allow folks to squat spaces long term without having to move at the whim of the police. I believe both of these solutions are linked.

Some of the art was themed around homelessness, and also you had free food which someone later described as feeding the homeless... how does a show themed around garbage and re-use tie into homelessness... and also in a larger sense in to the idea of public space?

Besides what I already said about treating and discarding people like garbage, garbage is a property rights issue. In many parts of the world, it is even illegal for people to collect garbage from the streets. This is absurd. The privatization of garbage around the world is a serious problem about which we are poorly informed in the US. It is based in capitalism and prejudice against informal recyclers. If Portland wants to be as ecologically and socially conscious as it claims, it need to start looking into the social and environmental implications of privatizing waste management.

Did this show include homeless people in the creation of any of the projects?

Yes. Ryan Birkland had help from street kids at P:ear for his glass cube installation. Some homeless folks helped weave the hammock, and also lent us a shopping cart to display the barbed wire ball. The homeless house was created by Jason Ehlers, a dedicated artist activist who used to be homeless. And a few of the locals repaired one of the installations when it was accidentally broken. They were extremely respectful and helpful all week.

I assumed the city gave you permission to use the esplanade (is that true? ignore this question if I'm wrong)... did you get any response from anyone from the city after it went up?

Yes, Portland City Art helped get us a permit through the city. In response to the event, the first people I heard from were the Portland Police. They were concerned that there were homeless people sleeping in the homeless house which, I explained, was kind of the intent of the installation. I had a couple of nice conversations with two officers about homelessness and social art. Ultimately, though, we went around in circles because they wanted us to lock the door to the house, which I refused to do. It would be counter to the artistic and social intent of the installation to lock it and I was very firm about this. Instead of making a decision about it, they had their lawyer call me. She was also nice, but clearly wanted the door locked and neglected to find any legal bearing for forcing us to lock it. I last spoke with them a couple of days ago, and haven’t heard anything definitive about it. Commissioner Nick Fish came down and saw the show. He really enjoyed it, especially the homeless house, so I expect they will let it runs its course with an unlocked door. As for my stubbornness about the open door, I believe that acts of trust and generosity can often encourage people to extend that same respect to others. I don’t know if the installation came across that way, but I do know that at least a few folks passed some comfortable, warm nights in there.

On your website,"it asks the public to find beauty in the aesthetics of garbage.... and of the streets and communities where our discards accumulate". If the public can find this beauty- what next?

Finding beauty in what was once rejected is the ultimate goal in any kind of conflict resolution. If people learn to accept the rejected, even with something as seemingly benign as garbage, it can have major impacts on their personal life and on society as a whole. I’d like to take this idea and work it into a model for social mediation and community development, especially in places where people have few resources or are stigmatized for surviving from our garbage.

What's next for Red Semilla Roja?

I am always looking for new links to social art around the world. And I would love to visit a new part of the world to extend the network. I’d also like to go back to Cairo and follow up on their amazing informal recycling system run by the Zabbaleen. Egyptian President Mubarak recently ordered the slaughter of all of the pigs in Egypt, which were one of the primary pillars of Cairo’s informal recycling market (they ate all organic matter). This is a perfect example of stigma driving human rights violations, and I’d like to use red semilla roja to help folks understand what people are going through around the world to reuse, recycle and survive.

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