Moving, writing, failing: spatialities of ambivalence in Detroit's ruinscapes

Abstract

In Detroit, the creative impulse to work in and around sites of ruin presents both aesthetic and ethical dilemmas. Creative practices that make use of ruined sites in the city are controversial to the extent that they present aesthetically attractive representations of real, unresolved social and environmental problems. This article examines the extent to which ‘ambivalent’ modes of moving, writing and thinking about creative practice in Detroit's ruinscapes might contribute to an enriched understanding of the function of EcoART in traumatised environments. Exploring four types of ambivalence (down/up; inside/outside; here/there; back/forth), the author investigates the relationship between failure and transformation in EcoArt practices in Detroit.

Keywords:

• Detroit
• ruin
• failure
• ambivalence
• ecoart

Notes

1. See Arts Corps Detroit: http://artscorpsdetroit.wayne.edu/lots.php.

2. For images of the Heidelberg Project, see http://www.heidelberg.org/.

3. For images of the Ice House Detroit, see http://icehousedetroit.blogspot.com/.

4. Some statistics will help illustrate the circumstances that inform experiences in Detroit: after decades of steady decline in the population, the city lost an additional 25% of its population between 2000 and 2010; approximately one in three residents lives below the poverty line, making it the poorest city in the country; 82% of the city's residents are African-American, with one in two African-American children living in poverty (Southeast Michigan Council of Governments 2010, 1; Detroit Kids Data 2011; Kids Count in Michigan 2010).