Carolyn Norr and Bridget Barsotti are two ambitious artists and educators that put their beliefs where their bodies are. Mid-September, they armed themselves with art supplies, cameras and the dedication to listen to people, and left Ann Arbor, MI on their bikes, pulling all their gear on trailers behind them. <\/p>\n
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Carolyn and Bridget are the visionaries of UnderCurrent Events, a project to collect people’s personal stories regarding terms heard often in mainstream media, words like heroism, terror, and war. Then, using street theatre and visual art as the vehicle, they share those stories with a wider audience. <\/p>\n
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\u201cWe seek people\u2019s personal stories that relate to topics in today\u2019s news,\u201d says Carolyn, who currently teaches art in the Oakland Public schools and sees her project as a popular education method. \u201cWhen we watch the news, we are presented with stories and images of what is going on in the world today. But what is going on with each of us as individuals? We need an avenue to express our memories, fears, hopes, and visions for the present and future. UnderCurrent Events provides people with that opportunity. We welcome everyone\u2019s story and honor everyone\u2019s power in telling their own experience.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Each day of their bike tour, Carolyn and Bridget wake up and start talking to people. On the outside, it\u2019s a very simple concept. But they don\u2019t just listen\u2014they act as a net, by collecting stories and re-presenting them through a series of street performances and within their mobile-gallery. As they travel from town to town, their collection grows. <\/p>\n
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\u201cIn sharing our stories and hearing other people\u2019s, we can see that we are not alone,\u201d Carolyn says. <\/p>\n
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Before they embarked on their journey, Bridget and Carolyn prepared performances on themes like \u201cCourage and Heroism,\u201d \u201cWalls and Borders,\u201d \u201cLoss,\u201d and \u201cOur People\u2014Family, Community and Nation.\u201d Performance pieces and poems were designed to leave space for later adding the voices and words of people that Carolyn and Bridget would come across on their ride. <\/p>\n
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\u201cEach of these pieces includes a blend of our own performances (skits, spoken word poetry, movement and music) integrated with the reading of people\u2019s responses to these themes. Some of the responses are pre-collected written responses and some are collected from the crowd, on the scene,\u201d says Carolyn. \u201cSomething we’ve really worked on is allowing real people’s voices to come thru earnestly \u2026 both the stories we read and the spoken word pieces we perform.\u201d<\/p>\n
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What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word \u201ccourage\u201d? When was a time when someone faced a challenge? When was a time you encountered a barrier you wanted to overcome and how did you do it? What was a time you felt free? When do you set someone else free?<\/i> These are the questions that prompt people to launch into their own stories. In the telling, common goals emerge. <\/p>\n
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\u201cAs this trip goes on I see through-lines between people,\u201d says Bridget.<\/p>\n
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Bridget recounts a story of going into a nail-manicure shop in Ohio. There, she met a woman from Vietnam who had been in the States for almost a year. Bridget was able to explain the fundamentals of the project by asking the woman about a time that she was faced with a problem, and what she did to overcome it. The woman spoke about how customers were rude and treated her badly because she couldn\u2019t speak English. \u201cI pray to God that I will become better at doing nails,\u201d the woman said. Bridget answered, \u201cbut those people are wrong for treating you that way.\u201d <\/p>\n
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\u201cShe was all smiles,\u201d Bridget remembers. \u201cShe couldn\u2019t believe I was taking her side.\u201d Bridget finds that people are excited to have their stories validated. \u201cEvery time we\u2019re talking to someone, especially who has a perspective different from the media, they are appreciative that they\u2019re being heard at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A week into the trip and Carolyn and Bridget were just starting to get into a rhythm, finding that they had to amend some of their original ideas. One of the major adjustments is that they can\u2019t perform street theatre to the extent that they had wanted because people are simply not out on the streets. They find that in many small towns, the place to congregate is church, and it is difficult to roll into town and expect to perform in places of worship. <\/p>\n
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In some towns, performance actually alienates them from the community. <\/p>\n
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\u201c[Street theatre] is kind of a San Francisco thing,\u201d Carolyn says, as she explains that some people unfamiliar with street performance treated her as though she were alien to them when she was onstage. The solution is to write down people\u2019s stories\u2014along with their pictures\u2014on 4×6 cards. These cards have become part of a mobile gallery that travels with them and illustrate a myriad of voices.
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Carolyn finds that, while performance art isn\u2019t always a point of connection, \u201cpeople are really excited about the interviews and want to see something happen with them \u2026 and people really are interested in other people\u2019s stories.\u201d Thus, the visual art is an effective way of sharing.<\/p>\n
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For the most part, those interested and receptive to street theatre already have some access to alternative media. After a show in front of a co-op at Oberlin College, people were moved to tears. <\/p>\n
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In order to bridge the gap between these students and the local community, Bridge and Carolyn decided to interview people from town and bring the stories back to campus. Says Bridget, \u201cWe\u2019re crossing over.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Biking 25-50 miles a day, in addition to conducting interviews, recording stories on cards, and performing, Carolyn and Bridget have their hands full. Fortunately, they\u2019ve found that the small towns along their way are more than generous as they find places to stay and set up their project. <\/p>\n
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\u201cPeople here seems to know each other, have a cohesiveness, so that as soon as two girls ride in with huge bob trailers asking about a place to stay, things spring into effect, calls are made, numbers are passed on, and instantly we have three options of places to stay and are eating salad in a sprawling homey-home,\u201d says Carolyn.<\/p>\n
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The idea for UnderCurrent Events emerged within a small group of activists in the Bay Area interested in popular education. Sami Kitmitto, an early collaborator who helped brainstorm ideas for the trip, says, \u201cThe idea for me started last November after the elections. It seemed we were doing a bad job connecting with the rest of America and organizing around the Bay Area seemed a bit redundant to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Like Carolyn, Sami was interested in questions of how to put popular education into practice. \u201cI was teaching at City College and really wanted to mesh my ideas around pedagogy and activism … How to engage people and teach them without preaching to them. Deep down we all hold similar values … but why do we come to such different conclusions? I had this idea to disseminate information and get people to absorb the information critically with this fundamental belief that upon reflection people would want to join on into a movement … or I’d want to join theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Carolyn was also teaching in the Bay Area: \u201cFor the last few years I’ve been involved in \u201cyouth development,\u201d which seems like a pretty common model of popular education that\u2019s primarily done with urban U.S. youth, but what about the \u201cmainstream\u201d? I think we’re both trying to understand where those mythologized \u201cred state\u201d folks are coming from, and trying to develop a model of how to communicate without just projecting statements loudly into brick walls.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cI was interested in finding out what is the voice of \u201cMiddle America,\u201d says Bridget, who was working as a performance artist and holds a degree in Popular Theatre. \u201cGrowing up in the Bay Area I didn\u2019t know what that was \u2026 There is news and then there\u2019s what\u2019s really going on \u2026 People don\u2019t believe their own voice matters because they\u2019re usually just told by the media what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
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For Carolyn, the unofficial goal of the project is to \u201clook at each person as having a unique and valid experience \u2026 We hope to create a mini-reality where honesty and listening are not as feared as they are in mainstream news.\u201d <\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is our trip,\u201d Carolyn writes to a large group of supporters through email, \u201cheavy, wet air and green trees sinking under the weight of their leaves, long roads stretching flat and potentially unpaved, American flags and Christian radio, truckers falling out of their cabs to point and yell to us, people taking care of us, giving us cantaloupe and tomatoes from the garden, bike pumps, life stories, 20 dollar bills and directions to the next location. People who are clearly suffering the ravages of racism, classism, sexism, empire, and environmental destruction \u2026 This is our trip too: traveling by the shoulder where we are showered with muddy water every time a semi passes, where we track the wildlife by road kill, where we count signs for \u2018Midwest Agricultural Genetics\u2019 in the cornfields and observe a sign that says, \u2018No More Subdivisions, End the Madness.\u2019 Where class divides\u2014social and economic\u2014hit as hard as the wind off a semi.\u201d<\/p>\n
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She writes of an old couple who were pushed into a new home by developers and forced to collect water in empty two-liter soda bottles from their old farm after their well dried up. Some people in town blame the dryness of the county\u2019s wells on mineral extraction, others blame it on Cabella’s<\/i>, a giant sporting goods store and tourist destination that recently installed an artificial lake. According to the couple, the town has mixed feelings about Cabella’s<\/i> because they made empty promises, like a shuttle service to downtown, and, as part of their contract, had the power to ban any grocery stores from opening. <\/p>\n
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\u201cMost everyone has been friendly and wanting to talk,\u201d says Carolyn, \u201cbut I feel here \u2026 the lingering sensation we are bearing this, not complaining, so don’t complain either<\/i>. I think I see in people’s eyes the recognition of inequality: How are you biking across country when we are just trying to get by?<\/i> [It\u2019s] not only a monetary thing, it\u2019s a sort of privilege of opportunities, availability of options and possibilities.\u201d <\/p>\n
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The trip has provided both Carolyn and Bridget time to think about what it means to be an artist and how to use art to \u201cbreak down walls and hierarchies rather than strengthen them, how to create something that does more than assert our own voices in a way that silences others, how to create openings, make art be something without distinct audiences and artists … because it\u2019s so easy for \u201cart\u201d to be a luxury, a symbol or accessory of the leisure class.\u201d Says Carolyn, \u201cI feel good about being on the ground, grappling with that question directly and intensively.\u201d<\/p>\n
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