Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, TED Talks Daily listeners, I'm Elyse Hugh. Today, we have a special treat for you. An episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked for you by us. TED has tons of podcasts that go beyond the TED Talk and help you spark your curiosity. For more, visit audiocollective.ted.com and check out Far Flung wherever you get your podcasts.
It's so hard for my head to comprehend that those are actual jail bars. What do you feel when you hear that? I think about vibrations. And how they have their healing properties. You know, like there isn't a person here per se, but that they hold something. These are very old. That part of the jail was built in 1926, I believe. So, you know, I mean, almost 100 years.
That's Maria Gaspar, an artist and activist in Chicago. For me, it's this way of transforming sort of the history of violence through the bars into something that maybe sounds like freedom. That sound is Maria striking a pair of pliers against these rusty jail bars.
They're a mix of sizes, but most about two feet tall, weathered and bent all weird, lying spread across a white table in her art studio. She picked them up from a local jail that was getting demolished. She doesn't know what the final piece will be yet, but those jail bars and their sounds will tell a very distinct story about a very distinct place. I'm Salim Reshamwala, and this is Far Flung.
Every episode looks at a different location and the ideas that flow from it. And when we think about public art, we often think of murals and statues commissioned by a local government. But today, we're on the ground in Chicago looking at a very specific kind of public art, place-based art, art that's grounded in the place it's created.
This kind of art often critiques the figurative and physical structures that are also its canvas. And we're going to look into why Chicago is an especially fascinating city for this kind of art right now, why there's a movement here, and how that's linked to the geography and history of the city. And I'm not out here driving around Chicago all by my lonesome. What's up, man? Great to meet you.
Great to meet you. Nice to meet you. In person. I'm with our co-producer for this episode, Carlos Javier Ortiz, who grew up in Chicago and is an artist and filmmaker. Hey, Salim. I'm excited about today. I'm going to introduce you to some of my friends who make art that's tied to Chicago. Hey. Hi. I'm Salim. I'm Tonika. Great to meet you.
So first, I want to introduce you to my friend Tanika, and she's created a project that's really fundamental to understanding Chicago. How do you know Tanika? I knew Tanika as a photojournalist, and then years later, she started this community arts project, and it was called the Folded Map Project.
I literally use Chicago's grid map to compare the same street that exists in my home neighborhood of Inglewood to the sister neighborhood on the north and south side of Chicago.
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Chapter 2: How does place-based art challenge perceptions in Chicago?
Carlos, am I right in saying that when people typically say north side, they mean white neighborhoods? And when they say south side, they usually mean black neighborhoods? Yeah, Salim, that's right. But, you know, in reality, the neighborhoods, they're more nuanced than that. How so? Well, there are many races and cultures, both on the north and south side.
But broadly speaking, the north side, it just seems to be a little nicer, or at least that's what people think. So an example would be 6720 North Ashland compared to 6720 South Ashland. And the bittersweet part about it is they're mostly racially and economically different from each other. So as part of the folded map project, Tanika has been photographing homes with almost mirror addresses.
In one of the pictures, the home on the left is of a smiling couple at the forefront of the photo. They're both white. They're standing in front of a square looking brick house. On the right hand side photo, you see a younger looking black man standing closer to the camera with a white triangle roof house in the background. The two homes don't actually look different in value.
So that's the image. The context Tanika brings when she presents it is that one of the houses costs about seven times as much as the other. The white family is in front of a home that costs around $500,000. And the black man is in front of a home that costs around $73,000. Basically, Chicago is split into a north and south side.
And because of the way the city is gridded, there's equivalent addresses on both sides, but not equivalent living conditions. This is something Tonika learned about up close from her high school days when she was bused from Inglewood to the north side. I met a lot of friends that I'm still close with today who, when I first met them, you know, didn't even...
No, people like me could be from Inglewood. And I had to learn, like, what do you mean people like me? You know, basically people who aren't like thugs or gang members. I had to be taught why the word illegal alien was bad because I didn't know. So, yeah, I know what can happen on the other side of awkwardness, uncomfortability. So that was the first stage of her project.
But as soon as she started photographing the houses, the people living in them had questions, naturally. And some of them wanted to be involved. So she brought the people together. I invited people to meet the person who lived on the same street just 15 miles away. And they agreed and they had a conversation and I recorded their meetings. My name is Nanette Tucker and I live in Englewood.
I'm Wade Wilson and I live in Edgewater. I'm Jennifer Channel and I live in Edgewater. That includes asking all of them the same question of how did you come to live in your neighborhood? What's missing from your neighborhood that you'd like to see? Is your place of peace in your neighborhood? Um, How much does your house cost or how much do you pay for rent? And some awkward moments happened.
And seeing them struggle through it is the lesson. I refer to it as social justice reality TV. You can learn a lot just watching some other people struggle through some nuanced conversations about race and segregation. Segregation, as a word, on its own, is kind of abstract.
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Chapter 3: What is the Folded Map Project and its significance?
It became a massive canvas. And while those projections were shown, they held a broadcast, blasting audio of stories from inside the jail. The day of the broadcast, the streets were already full of people because the project launched on Mexican Independence Weekend. So 26th Street during that weekend is pretty nutty.
You know, there's like tons of giant Mexican flags sticking out of people's car windows. There's just a lot of action and activity and celebration. And then you'll see the projected images onto the jail wall in the background. And you really kind of feel...
the way that these communities coexist with one another i mean in some ways i think it's one community you know like it is one the jail just it's in it yeah it's fortress but it's in the community but you know they're they're kind of um they're interacting they're um you know, kind of relating to one another in different ways.
Many people were just walking by, biking, families that lived a block away saw what was happening. They just, they strolled up with their lawn, again, lawn chairs keep coming up here, but they brought their lawn chairs and just sat and watched the 35 minute animation on a loop. And the ensemble members who walked
were incarcerated and who had since been released came and talked about their experience. It temporarily disrupted the line between inside and outside of the jail. People inside still couldn't get out, but that wall became a lot more porous. At the very least, stories and ideas were flowing in and out of the Cook County Jail in a way they hadn't before.
Before I got a lawyer and so forth, I was looking at 33 years. Luckily, I only did six months. I was looking at 33 years. But even with the thought of 33 years, I was thinking, man, I'm going to be able to get out and see what I've done here. And I'm going to be able to stand around some people who haven't been inside. And they're going to hear our stories from inside.
I'm going to be able to be out and see this. This is going to be like an aha moment. for the world. I got to do whatever it takes to be able to get out of here so I could see that. It was an incentive. And just that thought carried me through. And then when I was able to be here, oh my God, people brought lawn chairs. I was talking about the lawn chairs too. We had music, we had food trucks.
Christopher said the reach of the project had an impact on unexpected members of the community. Any guard that worked with us, their whole demeanor changed. It was like they were unhandcuffed. The guard themselves. Yes. Like they were able to, you know, be calm. And they didn't have to worry about any retaliation or anything. They transformed as we transformed.
One of the things that stands out in so many of the projects we're talking about is something like a sense of experimentation, connection or play. Even though they're difficult topics, there's people meeting each other just because of their addresses, a sort of makeshift radio station. It's like the playfulness is another way into those topics.
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