Public Events :: Ongoing Negotiations - Helen Liggett

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from CUDC Quarterly, 2:1 (Fall, 2001)
Helen Liggett’s "Ongoing Negotiations" is an installation of large format photos on the CUDC’s windows. The images show various forms of public action and interaction, and their placement inserts them between the activities of one of Cleveland’s busiest intersections and the service and educational activities of the CUDC.

Helen Liggett’s work as a photographer and public artist focuses on the city and the inhabitation of urban space, documenting life both on the streets of Cleveland and such far flung places as Zimbabwe. Her artistic practice complements her work as a Professor with the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and her prolific writings on urban theory and politics.

The images in Ongoing Negotiations are transparent plastic decals produced by Ariston of Springfield, NJ, a Graphic Design Technologies Company, and they were installed by Jerry Templeton of Buckeye Decal of Waverly, OH. Technical assistance was provided by John Corrigan. Design and artistic assistance was provided by Joe Fusco and Nick Zingale. Mailing costs for the announcement of the opening were provided by the Urban Center at Cleveland State University. 

Click here for more views of the installation.

Artist's Statement
Ongoing Negotiations is a tribute to the connections and encounters that constitute urban life. What the New York Times editorial of 12 September called "the innumerable habits and routines that define a city" is at the core of this project. The images are not signs (of the city). They are gestures that connect activities inside the Urban Design Collaborative to life on the street and also enter the flow of that life. The transparency of the images is key to understanding this. You can see the city through the images, and passersby have a new reason to look up and consider the activities of the CUDC as they go by. The way this works varies with the light both inside and outside the building.

The activities that complete the piece come from both inside and outside and work in the spaces in between. I think of these as fields of possibilities – sites for ongoing negotiations. In addition to being active, Ongoing Negotiations is also public. It creates an "in-between" zone of activity, joining the city to a building that could develop a cool distance from street life, in spite of its transparency. The main tool of engagement with the city and city life in this piece is, of course, the photographs. There is a lot of play in the images – a kind of game – with material available for interpretation and connection depending on play among images, and on play between the position of the images in relationship to activities going on in the building.

The ability to act in public defines what we mean when we use such general terms as democracy. Our way of life is based on the ability to make and freely use space in which we have a place. The three images from Grupe de Capoiera (a martial arts group who practice at University Circle in Cleveland) highlight this ability to come together and act in public that constitutes who we are as a people. What the members of this group do requires discipline, and ongoing negotiation. It is practiced in public space and is open to all comers. Because of all this it is, in the end, beautiful. Like the details of our lives together. -- Helen Liggett