Detroit Local
is part of a continual interest in the spaces of public transportation. Not
just the vehicles and their paths, but for the social spaces that form around
them, the social status they are afforded (or relegated to) and the chance to
participate in prompting more imaginative responses to both second-tier service
and the very real environmental, spatial potential of mass transit.
Collectively, I organize these projects
under Public Transport. Public Transport sets the rhythms and tempos of the
City in the places where you have time and space to encounter them. At the
bus/train/streetcar stop. Because if you have waited for a bus in Detroit you
have been…patient, bored, hot, cold. Because if you are waiting for a train in
the neighborhoods out of the center of Detroit…well, keep waiting. Public
Transport transcends the day-to-day act of waiting into opportunity for
cultural connection, surprise, and direct action.
Public Transport is situated equidistant
from what I would call experimental urban planning where the signature ephemera
of parades or block parties intersects with the cultural collisions that occur
when these coincidental communities collide with intentional actions.
