Lee Tusman

Sunday night I visited the Miss Rockaway Armada docked on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, PA. There was group singing, musical performances, and signed waivers so that we could board and walk around the junk/utopia barges. I first heard about Miss Rockaway perhaps 5 years ago when they built junk vessels and sailed down the Mississippi river. This was my first time seeing them up close and it didn’t disappoint. The collective organizes workshops and parties and ‘solicit dialogue about constructive and subversive ways of living.’ For this incarnation, they received support from the Pew Center For Arts and Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative. The flotilla was built on Broad Street, towed to a location adjacent to a bridge in the center of the city, and will be deconstructed and placed at the Philadelphia Art Alliance for exhibition.

Reminding me quite a bit of the architecture of burning man, I find a lot of beauty in their ephemeral manifestations. Spending time at art squats in Europe I was continually thinking about the difficulty of establishing and maintaining such a space in the rules-following world of the US. Miss Rockaway is one model of how to create space for community and creativity, but I also think about how it differs as an independent group and how it’s affected when partnering with an arts organization and PEW to receive a grant. Certainly this grant helped them get paid so they can spend time on this project, as well as be able to get a larger audience for what they are doing. At the same time, there are always compromises when accepting money.

What does it say that a major grant-making organization is helping to fund this? I read this as an indicator of the interest of government and organizations and those with money to support more creative spaces for public engagement and use of the commons. They certainly see this as a way to increase public satisfaction , which they probably link to economic success (for example, see The High Line project in New York City). 

It’s up to us to create more socially engaged creative spaces, and to make them successful. With or without or independent of support.