Closing Bell: From Brooklyn to Flint, Mich., and Back
Hate to see gentrification in Brooklyn? Well, Flint, Mich., could use a little of it. That’s the idea behind the Flint Public Art Project, which Greenpoint resident and Flint native Stephen Zacks has started. They’re putting on a summer performance series in a pair of abandoned grain silos, outfitting a former school bus to serve as mobile restaurant…
Hate to see gentrification in Brooklyn? Well, Flint, Mich., could use a little of it. That’s the idea behind the Flint Public Art Project, which Greenpoint resident and Flint native Stephen Zacks has started. They’re putting on a summer performance series in a pair of abandoned grain silos, outfitting a former school bus to serve as mobile restaurant and classroom, and turning a former Chevrolet manufacturing site into an immersive environment filled with work by emerging contemporary artists and designers both local and international, among other projects. Many of the artists live in New York, and tonight in Downtown Brooklyn there will be a party and fundraiser, called Free Cities, for the Flint Public Art Project at the Metropolitan Exchange at 33 Flatbush Avenue, 5th Floor, from 8 to 10 pm. “This party is in support of a broader effort to redistribute cultural capital, deconcentrate it, and to prove it really is useful and can produce something economically beneficial outside of the bubble of New York,” said Zacks. At the party will be food, drink, and a silent auction of art from New York- and Flint-based artists and makers as well as virtual video tours of Flint.
This entire argument is absurd — both in Brooklyn and Flint. The choice is not between “gentrification” and some kind of paradisiacal egalitarian development, folks. It’s between growth and decline. And it certainly is not a choice that artists or factory workers are making for everyone else. These trends are broader than any one individual or group. The bottom line, however, is that cities should be allowed to grow for whoever wants to be there. Why are people not more offended at the presumed right of existing residents to close the doors to newcomers as they seek to maintain some kind of exclusive domain over their neighborhoods? The right to emigrate is a fundamental one in this country, and indeed was at the core of its founding. It’s the Native Americans who should be complaining about the “gentrification” and send us all home to…Europe? Africa? Just think of what a Brooklyn apartment must have gone for if they sold Manhattan for $17.
I live in Flint Michigan and it was never disclosed the ultimate goal for the Flint Public Art Project was gentrification. I would be curious to know if these are the words of the blog or Stephen Zacks. As someone who works in both the art and social justice communities in Flint and around the state of Michigan, it is troubling to read such divisive and polarizing language used to describe a project that I was under the impression would be utilizing the principles of transformative organizing.
Nah, DP is still stuck with me.
And yet here you are, writing for a blog whose underlying purpose is to boost real estate prices in the bubble of Brooklyn.
Artistic Imperialism? Thanks for the laugh at your expense.