Excerpts from the following essay appeared as flags marking sites of learning identified by PSU students.

Let Knowledge Serve the City: A Social Education

Jen Delos Reyes with Katherine Ball, Constance Hockaday, Ariana Jacob, Hannah Jickling, Helen Reed, Michelle Swinehart, Lexa Walsh, and Jason Zimmerman

The words “LET KNOWLEDGE SERVE THE CITY” are literally upheld at Portland State University. Embedded in bronze capital letters on a concrete pedestrian footbridge on the university’s downtown urban campus, the creed is in the etiquette of the electronic age of communication shouting the message over the streets of Portland. This phrase and this spirit of the function of education in the polis is spread through the students and faculty who are encouraged by PSU to apply their knowledge through community-based learning academic courses, student leaders for service, internships, and community-based research. Though these initiatives are varied in their outcomes and motivations, what they all hold in common is that they free them selves from the perceived ivory tower of academia. Knowledge is not only dispersed from the university and spread over the city, but also these programs make clear that knowledge is outside the walls of our schools—that there is as much to be learned from the city and it’s inhabitants as there are situations out in the world for which the educations we receive can be directly applied. The students and faculty of PSU’s Art and Social Practice MFA program take this approach with them to the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO for the exhibition Condensations of the Social at Smack Mellon. Our contribution to this group show—“Let Knowledge Serve the City”—puts the approach of learning from a city into action in the neighborhood. The eight students/artists from Portland State University—Katherine Ball, Constance Hockaday, Ariana Jacob, Hannah Jickling, Helen Reed, Michelle Swinehart, Lexa Walsh, and Jason Zimmerman—have spent time in the area, meeting people who live or work there and have identified potential (and pre-existing) sites and moments of learning. Many of the individuals the students encountered are themselves the carriers of the knowledge and will throughout the course of the show make themselves publicly available to teach classes, enact demonstrations and engage in conversation. Some of the places the students identified are existing structures in DUMBO that offer classes, highlighting existing resources. These sites spread through out the neighborhood form an informal/unofficial urban campus of sorts. In the tradition of Street Work, the 1973 publication by Anthony Fyson and Collin Ward that encourages the understanding that their is much knowledge students can glean from interacting with their urban context, our students and the audience find themselves in a lineage of social and environmental education. Carrying this through based on the “Exploding School” model which utilizes the “scattered resources” of city space as a means of context based site-specific teaching. To put it simply, in the words of Alice Cooper, “school’s been blown to pieces.” The sites of learning and exchange that have been identified and created by the artists involved range from learning about one another through exchanging and producing clothing, exploring the banks of the Hudson River, the educational offerings of a CSA, a community based bicycle shop, a local restaurant, the neighborhood copy shop, a fiddle teacher, and lessons in manners from the inhabitants of DUMBO.

Many of the sites of learning selected reflect a push towards the collective impetus. Recycle-A-Bicycle, is a community-based bike shop and non-profit organization in DUMBO that provides educational/job training programs and encourages environmental stewardship and everyday bicycle use. On Wednesdays from 7-9 pm, you can learn bike mechanics at Recycle-A-Bicycle’s weekly volunteer night. In addition to their shop in DUMBO, Recycle-A-Bicycle operates bike programs in three New York City Public Schools, where students can enroll in a bicycle mechanics elective course, or drop in after school to volunteer and earn a bike with volunteer hours. Profits from the retail shops support youth programs around New York City. Through programs such as Earn-A-Bike, Ride Club, Cycle Craft, and Summer Youth Employment Program, Recycle-A-Bicycle, is dedicated to the health and well-being of NYC youth. In this past year alone, Recycle-A-Bicycle, has worked with more than 1,000 young people and collectively pedaled more than 10,000 miles. On average, Recycle-A-Bicycle, salvages 1,200 bicycles each year from the waste stream, diverting a total of 36,000 pounds of waste from NYC’s landfills.

Though fashion usually represents an individual expression of style, a local shop Trunk takes a cooperative approach to design. Michelle Swinehart met Ilse Eriksson on a cold day in February while walking around DUMBO with learning on her mind. When she stepped into Trunk she noticed the handmade aesthetic in many of the objects for sale, but didn’t get the whole picture until she talked to Ilse, one of the designers in the collective behind the clothing. She learned that the store is co-owned by 5 women who design, make and sell their work in the store. This collective approach to selling locally made clothing, accessories and furniture brought to mind a familiar model for Michelle: Farmers Markets and the CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. For Michelle, seeing groups of local makers/producers coming together in many communities and contexts right now seems emblematic of the current social condensations in our culture. This community-generated approach will carry through in the project. Michelle will begin by interviewing the designers to learn about their approach to making and selling from a local and personal context. Processes will materialize out of these conversations. Michelle will create a collectively printed pattern using excerpts from these interviews, thus potentially resulting in local production on a community or neighborhood level. Questions form the basis for this inquiry. How are economies and social dynamics embodied in your work? Do you see our lives becoming increasingly intertwined? How does the language of clothing translate into our everyday lives?

Putting the focus on the local Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, is a way for people to buy vegetables directly from a local farmer. Each week, farmers Fred and Karen Lee bring organic vegetables from their farm in Long Island to the CSA members in DUMBO and Vinegar Hill. Members pickup their vegetables at the beautiful outdoor courtyard of the Phoenix House, a drug and alcohol recovery center in DUMBO. Leftover vegetables are donated to the Phoenix House’s kitchen and culinary programs. During the pick ups, DUMBO Vinegar Hill CSA hosts classes about sustainable living. As part of the exhibit, these classes will be free and open to the public. Classes at the Phoenix House Courtyard run from 5:00 pm -7:30 pm and include the following: June 23, Sang Lee Tasting-Sample various dressings and dips made at the farm. June 30, Kombucha-Taste this medicinal tea and learn about its multiple benefits from a local brewer. July 14, Composting- Learn more about urban composting with an expert from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. July 21, Grill-a-Chef- A professional chef will be on site to answer questions about everything from Arugula to Zucchini. August 11, The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide To Eating Local on a Budget- Leda Meredith is Based in Brooklyn, and she is the author of the recently published book about eating locally.

Neighborhood restaurants are often a way to taste local flavors and get a sense of place while traveling. In a collaboration between Hannah Jickling, Helen Reed & Ron Silver—the owner of Bubby’s will give a talk on the genealogy of some of the recipes on the Bubby’s menu. Every year Ron takes road trips across the United States “stealing” recipes from roadside diners, restaurants and cafes. Ron will share some of his favorite stories about how he found some of the recipes he has found across the country that he serves at this local eatery.

The act of artists from PSU traveling to Brooklyn to locate and claim sites of learning and stake claims to them though marking them with flags harkens to a time of unchartered territory. In Constance Hockaday’s collaboration with Marie Lorenz and Mare Liberum, this expeditionary journey will have the three of them exploring the shoreline of the Hudson River in hand made boats. Along the way the three will highlight the points of access along the water where people could launch into the water. The idea for this project came primarily from the frustration of trying to launch a raft in DUMBO near Smack Mellon and realizing that there are many regulations in place restricting access to the water. All three artists have a sea fairing spirit and have dealt with water travel directly in their work, in some cases even traversing oceans in hand made rafts. This exploration of the Hudson river together also functions as a conference of nautical artists that will share with one another and the public their work, their approach and their beliefs around the importance of public access to the water.

Teaching within DUMBO is Sarah Alden, who teaches students all over Brooklyn, to play the fiddle. Sarah and her students will do a performance at Smack Mellon during the tenure of the show. In addition to making her teaching public through this performance with her students, Sara will be collaborating with artist Lexa Walsh in writing jingles for DUMBO. These jingle writing sessions will done in the form of open workshops where people will discuss their sense of place and impressions of the neighborhood to create and record these collaboratively written songs.

The sense of place being explored in the jingle writing workshops is concretely countered with a Helen Reed and Constance Hockaday’s readers that they are compiling on the history and development of DUMBO area. These readers, set in the tradition of academic study, will be available at a local copy shop with readings related to the role of the artist in urban development. During the exhibition there will be a reading discussion group in the gallery that will address the articles from the reader. These reading groups will also include people from the neighborhood that will be invited to share their own knowledge and perspectives on the history and development of DUMBO, as well as their personal connections to the readings which include texts that speak directly to the situations located in the place that they live their day to day lives.

From a sense of place in the writing of anthems for a neighborhood and compiled historical factual information on the development of a neighborhood to feeling like a stranger in an unknown place, unfamiliar with the proper codes of conduct, Ariana Jacob will tour public and commercial sites in DUMBO asking people in each place to teach her manners. What are the appropriate things to do and say in each of these settings? How do people act in order to come across like they belong in a particular bagel shop or housing development? Ariana will document her attempts to learn manners directly from individual people in the neighborhood and report on the range of responses she gets to this socially awkward investigation of social norms.

This essay just as the sites of learning identified in DUMBO are scattered though out the area around Smack Mellon, excerpts from this text appears as one of three flags. The first flag is a pennant shaped flag that reads “LET KNOWLEDGE SERVE THE CITY” accompanied by the PSU logo, the second flag is a uniquely shaped flag that bears and image related to the educational experience, and the third flag contains writing from this essay directly related to describing the learning exchange. These flags do not attempt to make claims to undiscovered territories—these places of exchange and learning exist without our presence as students in the city. These markers function more like school pennants to draw attention and celebrate these places where social learning is happening. As loudly as PSU proclaims its ethos over the city of Portland, Alice Cooper proclaims in his rock anthem Schools Out, that “school’s out forever.” Let Knowledge Serve the City embodies the polis as school and the social as education.