lecturesHAA: Waiting for the City – Phillip Cooley from HAA on Vimeo.
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“Waiting for the City” – A Stream of Effective Consciousness
On Tuesday, February 16th over 70 people gathered in Eastern Market’s Shed 3 to participate in the first lecturesHAA event of 2010. With a quiet and unassuming demeanor, Phillip Cooley, co-owner and creator of Slows Bar BQ in Corktown, began his lecture, “Waiting for the City.” Through a cursory review of his life experiences, he discussed the events that ultimately led him to Detroit and his evolution as an entrepreneur, advocate, designer and contractor.
By tracing the lines of a discursive career – highlighting activities prior to his arrival in Detroit, as well as those that occurred once there – Cooley illustrated the foundations for his personal urban perspective and the motivations for a body of work that ranges from ephemeral gestures to long-term strategic planning. Within a broad stream of information came an image of a person whose commitment, advocacy and direct engagement with the city, provides a powerful example of one individual making a difference in Detroit.
After his childhood in Marysville, MI, Cooley attended film school in Chicago and then began an early foray into international modeling. From these collective experiences, he was exposed to different places and cultures, finally bringing him to a point of reconciliation and understanding with Detroit, a city with which he had always felt uneasy. He also drew upon another touchstone for guidance. Over the following years, Air Guitar, by Dave Hickey, would act as a talisman, through which insight and strength could be drawn.
The subject matter of the lecture was linked by several common elements, including community advocacy and a clear recognition of urgency. The presentation is organized below into three main categories:
The significance of art. For Cooley, there are a number of important art projects within the city of Detroit that embody the way in which art and artistic expression are not just capricious pursuits, but rather, efforts that can have real direct and indirect impacts. He outlined a handful of projects driven to provoke thought and raise community awareness. These included the well-established Heidelberg Project (see previous post on Heidelberg Project), by Tyree Guyton, Phillip’s own artistic interventions within the existing Michigan Central Depot (see previous post on the MCD) , the guerrilla efforts of Object Orange and the recent work on the Ice House, about which Cooley explained how the artists used their work to raise funds to pay the back taxes on a nearby home for a single mother.
Do anything you can. When so much needs to be done to improve life in Detroit, Cooley noted that the associated devices and methodologies need to be as diverse as the problems. This includes helping improve access to nourishing food through urban agriculture and providing recreational space by creating a BMX pump track. It also includes his ClandesDine events. Highlighting the second iteration (ClandesDine 44), Cooley explained how this most recent event was held in the reprogrammed Burton Theatre gymnasium on the evening of Super Bowl 44. The evening gathered over 250 people, sampling four courses of cuisine from local restaurants. All proceeds from ClandesDine events support local charities. Cooley also discussed the advantages of thoughtful, organized deconstruction in a city such as Detroit, with innumerable vacant, deteriorating structures. He illustrated how the harvested materials could be reused, presenting an early prototypical garden shelter, as well as Slows Bar BQ itself. He explained how future “deconstruction / reconstruction” projects such as these may be supported by resources such as the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit.
Civic aspiration. Two of the larger areas of discussion surrounded Cooley’s efforts to improve and reinvent the Michigan Central Depot and Roosevelt Park. Outlining a fledgling strategy to introduce a Smithsonian museum within the Depot, Cooley discussed how he and many others, such as Toby Barlow, the co-president and executive creative director of Team Detroit, felt confident such bold ideas have potential. This concept is situated within another ongoing effort to replan and redesign Roosevelt Park, creating a beautiful and functional foreground between Slows Bar BQ and the Depot. Cooley explained the two initial phases of work have been completed with a mass of volunteer labor and limited corporate donations. By organizing the energy of many individuals, including local design professionals, Cooley is attempting to bring the park back to life and provide a pretext for addressing the Depot itself.
By the end of his talk, Cooley had piqued the interest of the audience, many of whom seemed to represent the wide cross-section of efforts in which he is engaged. Questions ranged from how he had been able to obtain permits through the city, to whether or not some of his slides piled on to the “ruin porn” bandwagon, or what he thought would be the best method for Detroit land consolidation.
No matter how the questions were framed, or the intent behind them, it was clear that Phillip Cooley is someone who not only gets things done, but his drive and passion for the city inspire others to make a difference too. In his closing comments, two common refrains emerged:
1. The importance of community involvement and how several small scale efforts can create larger, successful urban interventions.
2. In a city where recognizable improvements are often implemented by the venerable business and governmental elite, and measured by units so large that smaller efforts can fall off the radar, Cooley and his co-contributors provide a nimble and effective contemporary methodology for making good things happen. Through conviction, hard work and a clear (if moving) vision, vested and thoughtful people are making the differences that form the basis for a vibrant city. They also pose a powerful question back to us: now what will you do? (Note: it’s not rhetorical)
