Second Workshop #2
February 17, 2007
The evening began with Walter Ruttmann’s beautiful silent film, “Berlin: Symphony of a City,” playing against the far wall of our meeting room. It was both a portal into one of our subjects (Berlin, between the wars) and a demonstration of the exciting new projector Matthew bought that day off Craig’s List.
Amidst a delicious bounty of rigatoni putanesca and salad (thank you Melia Donovan), we focused on gatherings — any event at which a group gathers together, whether intimately (as in a class, a dinner, a small party) or en mass (as in street protests, a music audience, the crowd at a sports match). We hope to understand and use our ability to get together, physically, as a means for reaching or catalyzing new communities near and far.
Sergio Pastor discussed a recent memorial for his friend who died when his bike was hit by a car. Many divergent groups were drawn to the memorial – family, close friends, some who had just read the news, bike activists. A microphone was provided, but there was no program, and Sergio was impressed that the various groups melded tightly together as the evening went on. The stories people told knit these separate groups into a single fabric, not by leadership or design, but by a kind of underlying common desire. Abi Spring, drinking Jim Beam, recalled an evening when her mother started a brawl at a dance hall near Fort Lewis, in Tacoma, by setting off an M-80. The crowd, mostly soldiers who would soon be shipped off to war, was ready to riot, and the sharp noise gave them all permission to do so. Leslie Miller, new to the class, told us about a weekend sponsored by her church when she was young, at which dozens of teens were taken away from home and subjected to an intense “brainwashing” that culminated in a public pledge of fidelity to the church. This annual gathering was called “Chrysalis,” and Leslie recalled the pressure of her peers in a public group all making their identical declarations. TJ Norris recalled the mosh-pit at a Nina Hagen show (mosh pits being a potent gathering place of bodies together for many members of the class) and a ceremony at which his Aunt, a nun, was made to give vows. Stephanie Snyder told us about a riot in Athens that seemed to coalesce from out of nowhere; thousands of people shot guns and fought and struggled. 16 people died and the new government, the object of this protest, resigned the next day.
Stephanie’s recollection made us ask where in Portland one would go to riot. Is there a public space that matters enough that its disruption would topple a government, or even do anything more than trigger a news story? Pioneer Court House Square was criticized for its inessentialness (do what you like there, it matters to hardly anyone), and the Park Blocks were discussed fondly, but also thought to be peripheral to the smooth functioning of the city.
Luisa Guyer was reminded of the excitement she felt last Spring when the immigration marches occupied some downtown streets. The size of the crowd, their simultaneous variety (many ages, races, classes) and unity (the white shirts, a single, clear message) compelled her to rush and join them. Whatever elusive power and potential we feel there is in a mob of people together in public space was, we agreed, evident and active at the immigration march.
Melia Donovan asked if we considered public transportation (the bus or the MAX) to be a kind of public space. Does gathering there catalyze any of this nascent power? She recalled the way NY subway passengers will be crushed up against one another and yet maintain a kind of solitude. In Tokyo, also, I recalled, crowds are crushed in against one another, shoved by white-gloved handlers, and yet retain a kind of isolated dignity that isn’t at all social. We discussed the times that car- or bus-loads will share a conversation (as in a stalled or blacked-out car) and the temporariness of that intimacy; how one feels the joy of solidarity and then sheds it easily just as soon as the emergency is over and the car doors open.
This potpourri of gatherings comprised our research sample, and we added to it the many examples of gatherings documented in Harry Kessler’s diaries of Weimar Berlin, Berlin In Lights. Kessler’s eventful days included dinner parties, tete a tetes, club room rendezvous, mass marches, riots, backroom negotiations, parliamentary meetings, night club debauches, diplomatic summits, and nearly every possible kind of gathering, large and small, in this intensely social, crisis-ridden European capital. The excerpts we read from his diary covered the tumultuous months of 1918-1919, during which the abdication of the Kaiser opened up a space of revolutionary crisis. Where, we asked ourselves, did power lie in the landscape of all these kinds of public meetings? Was power in the back rooms of the Reichstag, where the revolution’s make-shift committees met? Was power in the dining room of Paul Cassirer, where Kessler met with a small coterie of cultural and political operatives? Was power in the mass demonstrations that swept through the city’s squares and streets, threatening lives and livelihoods?
While our answers were inconclusive, they gave rise to questions about the hiding places of power in our city, in the social landscapes we navigate. Luisa recalled arriving at a Starbucks one morning to see a horrifying picture of Iraqi car bomb victims on the front page of the New York Times. No one seemed to take notice and the business of coffee drinking went on, undisturbed. Luisa felt powerless, defeated by the sheer indifference of her surroundings (and even a part of herself) to the incontrovertible horror of the image on the newspapers. Was there no power in any of those gathered to do anything, to react together against what faced them?
Her example made us question where “public space” is, and what conditions constitute a public. Is Starbucks a public space? Despite its private ownership and control, it is the space where many go to see and be with strangers. Even our prototypical public spaces, such as the European café opening out onto a public square, are riddled with private ownership and control. Yet they, nevertheless, manage to constitute a public space by the ways that they function.
Erik Palmer reminded us that Euro American public culture has its roots in the private coffee shops of, for example, London in the 18th century, where two changes — (1) the publication of the first weekly tabloids,, such as The Tattler and The Spectator, that were distributed through coffee shops, and (2) the conduct of public discussions in those same gathering places — gave rise to what we now call “public opinion.” He urged us to read Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno on this subject (and we will). Erik also asked us to consider the difference between a crowd or group and institutions. When does a group become an institution? And, how does that shift change the nature of their function, both for those affected by the group’s/institution’s actions and for those operating within the group or institution?
I asked the class to think about the most positive threads in this great, motley fabric of group and crowd phenomena — the powers and potentials that uplifted them, that they desired and thought well of — and to start thinking pragmatically about ways to trigger those potentials through a future event. Next week, we will try to plan a gathering that could catalyze the powers and potentials of the crowd, the mass — the power of people gathering together. We will also meet with our special guest for the evening, Beth Burns, whose work shaping and running the youth resource center, P:ear, offers an excellent example of activating space for others to gather in and use.
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