Blueprints and artwork merge in ‘Urban Futures’
STORY SUMMARY »
The ARTS at Marks Garage blurs the boundaries of art in "Alternative Urban Futures," an exhibit that explores visions -- real and imagined -- of the future both here and abroad. The show includes traditional artwork as well as architectural renderings and detailed, glossy engineering plans.
The point is to expand the scope of creative perspectives, says Rich Richardson, creative director of Marks Garage.
"As a community arts center, we're a place of intellectual inquiry," he says. "Bringing people outside the domain of fine art, we've been getting really positive feedback."
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RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
"Mid-21st Century Light Bulb" by Frank Sheriff is part of "Alternative Urban Futures."
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Walk into "Alternative Urban Futures" expecting the usual art-show fare and you'll likely find yourself disoriented. The current exhibit at the ARTS at Marks Garage does include the occasional painting and drawing that envisions future city life. But those are almost obscured by huge, glossy, detailed engineering plans for real cities and poster-size architectural renderings for Hawaii projects yet to come to fruition. So what's this all about?
'Alternative Urban Futures'
» On exhibit: Through Nov. 17
» Place: The ARTS at Marks Garage, 1159 Nuuanu Ave.
» Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays
» Call: 521-2903
» Also: A "Futures Workshop" with Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies will explore alternative futures for Chinatown; noon to 4 p.m. Nov. 17. Call 956-2888 or e-mail info@foundfutures.com to reserve a space.
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"The beauty of this show is the variety of source material, which ranges from sophisticated, high-tech displays to ideas sketched on a bar napkin," says Rich Richardson, creative director of Marks Garage. "There's cutesy, friendly space aliens and ... serious attempts to create a better environment. The show is a laboratory experiment of how all these different formats play upon each other.
"It is unique and surprising and stretches the expectation of what to find in a gallery."
The exhibit actually began outside the gallery on the streets of Chinatown in early October, when Marks Garage helped the collaborative multimedia group FoundFutures present four scenarios of the district's future via agitprop (political perspectives communicated through art).
Fictitious ads were plastered along Chinatown streets that had some folks worried. One scenario, titled "McChinatown," for instance, utilized posters announcing the arrival of such franchises as Starbucks and McDonald's.
"These were intended to point to the fact that the trajectory of rapid development in Chinatown might lead to gentrification of the area and loss of its character and flavor," Richardson explains.
RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Rich Richardson, director of the ARTS at Marks Garage, says the mix of perspectives in the exhibit "Alternative Urban Futures" expands the concept of what to expect in an art gallery.
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RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
A detail from Jim Channon's "Posters Found at Hawaii Island Food Summit" imagines how agricultural structures might be made more accommodating -- including plug-in modules and portable buildings that split apart for transport.
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Other scenarios include "Green Dragon," presenting ecological themes in a world in which Hawaii is recognized as a sovereign nation and China has become a dominant world power; "The Bird Cage," depicting a quarantine on Oahu after an avian flu breaks out in Chinatown; and "Dig Deeper," a "social transformation scenario" yet to be completely revealed.
Posters and other works, such as fake fliers of missing persons from the "Bird Cage" agitprop, were moved off the street and into the gallery.
"All these visuals were used as tools to spark discussion about issues that may affect us in the future," Richardson says.
The exhibit also includes pieces received through a "Call to Artists," and presentations by invited participants such as architectural and engineering firms sharing plans for real future projects.
One of the Hawaii invitees is working with China on a post-nature estuary in Fujian province, which Richardson says is more interesting than anything that could have been conjured up in someone's imagination.
"It's asking all the right questions," he says. "The estuary is addressing a system that's actually collapsed -- and that's pertinent for wherever you might live."
RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
"Galleria Waikiki" is Joe Farrell's 1990 rendering of a retail-office antenna project for the Wave Waikiki site.
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RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
"Freshly Painted," by Kirsten Rae Simonsen and Scott Groeniger, is among the more abstract views of the future included in the exhibit "Alternative Urban Futures."
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Another real plan for China re-creates a city from the ground up, addressing even the sociological question of how engineering plans can encourage people to interact.
"That begs the question of how land use is addressed in Honolulu," Richardson says. "It's fascinating."
Among architectural plans for Honolulu is Architect Hawaii's Kakaako Performing Arts Center, a shell-shaped rendering that looks too fantastical to be believable -- and it's that blurring of fantasy and reality that is the artistry of the exhibit.
Uncertainty over which projects are fake requires the viewer to ponder the works and consider the state of our environment. What's utter fantasy? What's reality? What's a real possibility -- and what do we do about it?
Incidentally, the Kakaako Performing Arts Center is real. It's Honolulu's answer to the dramatic Sydney Opera House. "It may be 20 years in the making, but that's what's planned," Richardson says.
RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
"Yanagase History (Time) and Memory with Space," by Niika Hyakumachi, is a model that expresses urban design on several levels, literally.
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THE FACT that the ARTS at Marks Garage has curated such an ideologically expansive exhibit speaks to the organization's role in Chinatown, Richardson says.
"We have become a town hall for ideas from our creative community, and this exhibit does well at (showcasing) this. All the voices together in the show make for a hybrid format that's really interesting -- and Marks has been heading that way through 'Shelter' (a multidisciplinary exhibit on housing issues) and now 'Alternative Urban Futures.' Next up is a show on Chinatown itself that will include everything from crafts to industrial design," he says.
When Marks Garage opened as a community arts center in 2001, the intent was to revitalize the district through culture and arts. A project of the Hawaii Arts Alliance, the center is run by performing- and visual-arts groups that share office, performance and gallery spaces. It also provides educational outreach and has been fundamental in development of the monthly First Friday gallery walk, launched in 2003, which draws 2,500 visitors to the area's galleries, restaurants, clubs and performance centers.
"Marks has a two-pronged mission when it comes to the term 'community,'" Richardson says.
"There's the arts and there is the neighborhood. We don't want to be a spaceship that just landed in the middle of Chinatown. We want to engage in our surroundings and be good neighbors. We want to spend our money here and make arts accessible to our neighborhood."