Translator: Katarina Vlkova Reviewer: Zuzana Šplhová
So it's really a pleasure to be here,
and thanks so much to the TEDx team for the invitation.
I am a photographer and a public artist,
and I grew up right outside New York City.
And I was fascinated
by all the different stories that New Yorkers had,
the people that lived in New York.
And as a young person,
I was fascinated by the opportunity of potention photography,
really being able to tell the stories of communities and individuals -
sometimes untold stories.
And also, as I became a photographer,
I really became interested in that kind of magic of the relationship.
So, I moved to Europe in the mid 80s,
and I was based out of Vienna, Austria
as a photojournalist and editorial photographer,
and in 1990,
I was invited by the government of the then Soviet Republic of Georgia
to be an artist in residence.
And a year later, the people that invited me,
they headed up the opposition army
and staged a Coup d'état
against Gamsakhurdia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia,
who was the first elected president
of the Republic of Georgia since 1922.
This is a shot from the inside of the opposition headquarters
where I was embedded with the army.
This is a soldier firing onto the parliament,
where Gamsakhurdia was headquartered,
and they finally ousted them after two weeks.
So, I'm very interested in what happens to people,
both politically and socially,
where they live but also in other countries.
And in Vienna, I became really interested in the 80s
about people who had survived Nazi persecution
and had come back to Vienna,
where they'd been thrown out of their homes,
and reestablished their homes on the place of their former persecution.
This is Antonia Lehr.
She survived Auschwitz.
This is Franz Burda.
He was in the resistance.
So at the end of the 90s,
I'd been photographing for about 15 years professionally,
and I started thinking about what is the impact of my photographs
on both the people that I'm working with,
on the audiences ...
And with so much imagery at the end of the 90s -
television, video, web,
photography, advertising -
what impact was I really making?
So I started rethinking documentary photography
and how I could potentially
work it to a new form.
And I started to become really interested in public places,
and places that in effect only had maybe one usage,
but I was really interested in what went on in these places
and how one could use them
for storytelling and telling about communities
and telling about individual stories.
So based on the project that I'd worked on in Vienna -
these are collected photographs from survivors of Nazi persecution -
I created a project in this archive,
where using documentary photographs, the images would project into the space.
And you as the viewer, you as the audience,
history would be projected back onto you.
In some ways, to question you:
What's your role going to be in history?
I was also just really interested in the people that worked in these spaces.
And I was really interested in how do you deepen their experience
of what they're doing in these places.
So, public art here becomes a question:
Why do we need it?
Well, most of you have probably been to an art gallery before.
And you know the experience of going into this white cubicle
and seeing work.
It's a space of collectors,
where artists want to show,
where art is bought.
And you might know this experience, which is the museum gallery.
This, in fact, is the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
It's the Monet, Water Lillies room,
and in some way,
galleries have even become these spaces of "mediated experiences."
You've a gentleman who is sitting there photographing the artwork,
opposed to being there and experiencing it.
And then you have the Museum of Modern Art,
which is a public institution -
in part ...
It costs 25 dollars admission
to get into the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
So, these were the kind of experiences that we know about viewing art.
So I think it is incredibly important
that we have this other kind of way
of engaging and experiencing artwork too.
This is a project that I did.
But first I want to tell you where I live.
I live now in Minnesota.
And as you can see, Minnesota ...
is quite northern.
In fact it's right next to Canada,
and it does one thing a lot.
It does a lot of things, but it does one thing particularly well.
(Laughter)
It snows in Minnesota.
(Laughter)
It snows six months in Minnesota!
(Laughter)
So, the municipality in the early 60s
was interested in bringing people to the downtown
and providing for them a climate controlled space
that they could shop in,
that they, in the downtown zone,
that they would be able to walk and commute to work,
and the series of what's known as "skyway bridges"
was built in Minneapolis.
I live in the Twin Cities, which is Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Now, Minneapolis, the skyway system today has eight miles of bridges,
connecting 80 city blocks,
that are over 80 blocks.
And they're privately owned.
Today this is what one of them looks like,
and what, if you were in Minneapolis, you might be experiencing.
And they connect buildings, as I mentioned, where people shop,
have coffee.
[inaudible]
So, this is one very specific characteristic of Minneapolis
because in Minneapolis, there is the largest
skyway system in the United States.
Now there's another interesting characteristic, also, that Minnesota has,
besides for snow,
besides for skyways,
and that's that some people, like myself, who go there.
And there are people from all over the world
that have ended up in these really cold places
that has the temperature basically the same as Siberia.
(Laughter)
So, I thought it was incredibly interesting
that there are more than 120 languages spoken in Minnesota.
So, in 2005,
I negotiated with the city
to start a project about immigrants in Minnesota.
We have the largest Somali population,
in Minnesota, in the United States.
We have the largest Hmong population,
that's an ethnic group from Laos.
And we have the second largest Tibetan population.
So I thought, How could I give voice to immigrants' experiences
and what would be a good place?
Well, why not the skyway?
So, from the outside -
this is what it looked like at night, this was in 2008 -
when you were walking through, you would look through the photographs,
and you could literally see the city
through the eyes of the people who I worked with -
I worked with 23 different people from 23 different countries;
I interviewed them about their life:
What does it mean? What does home mean to them?
What kind of struggles have they had?
And also, What does the word "home" mean to them?
From the outside,
this concept behind the project is
in the United States, we are all immigrants
except if we're Native American or African American.
And so it really was also about building tolerance
to think about what's our shared history
as Americans or living in the United States.
First generation, fifth generation, etc.
This is the experience from the inside.
The photographs were three meters by four meters.
And you can see towards you, on the left hand side,
there is a word for home.
And that's actually in Farsi, Persian.
So, out of this project,
it was the end of 2008,
a bad economy started in the United States,
and we brought it everywhere else,
and ...
(Laughter)
I decided in 2009
to begin a major project in a bad economy in St. Paul,
using four skyways
and working with 58 people.
These are some of the spaces that I'm using in St. Paul.
Now, St. Paul has the largest publicly owned skyway system,
owned by the city, in the world.
Largest publicly owned skyway system.
It connects five miles and 30 city blocks.
Now here's something.
If you're interested in doing this kind of work,
one thing that's really important to know about is
good ... bureaucracy ... takes ... time.
(Laughter)
So, I want to give you an example,
on completing this project now in St. Paul.
I want to give you an example of a bit about the process.
Six years to negotiate the permit.
Eight different city and building entities to approve use of the site.
Two years to create the artwork.
35 funders,
28 team members,
15 advisors, and ...
One public hearing yet to come ...
(Laughter)
At least once.
So, you think, Why do you do this?
And I work with multiple stakeholders,
I have to have the municipality give me a permit,
and I have to work with funders and stakeholders, audiences,
the people, who work with me -
What's going to be the return on investment?
And how am I going to impact the community that I'm working with?
Well, based on the Minneapolis project that you saw,
we hired an independent consultancy firm
to do an objective evaluation on the project.
What was the impact?
Here's some of the questions, and here's some of the results.
Question: "How well do you think
the project increases awareness of diversity in our community?"
The majority found it excellent.
"Does the project increase awareness
about immigrants in Minnesota, and their needs?"
Again, excellent.
"Was the project a good demonstration
of the role and effect of art in public places?"
Excellent.
And no, we didn't bribe anyone to say "excellent."
Just gave them some coffee, reward cards ...
(Laughter)
No, we didn't do that.
So.
It was 1991 ...
(Laughter)
(Applause)
and I embarked to the Republic of Georgia
via the Bratislava train station,
where I took a train to Moscow and then from there I flew to Tbilisi.
Look familiar?
(Laughter)
So, I have now a question.
I want to see the hands of all of you
who've come through that train station today
to come to the TEDx.
Hands?
Any hands?
Who was in the train station last week?
Over the last month? How many people?
Aah!
It's an important train station, isn't it?
(Laughter)
Oh, it's a central train station!
That's right.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So, just think for a second.
What would be your story?
And what could be told in this space about Slovakia
or the people that come through the station, like yourselves?
What would it look like?
And what would your idea be?
How could this space be transformed?
So, the next time you take a train
and you go to the station, think about it.
How would you like the station to look and feel?
And what would be the story that should be told there?
So, thank you very much.
It's really been great being here, and I also really invite you,
next time you are at the station, to think about it.
Thanks!
(Applause)