(Re)Inventing Rockaway
“Art itself is an activity of change, of disorientation and shift, of violent discontinuity and mutability, of the willingness for confusion even in the service of discovering new perceptual modes.”
--Robert Morris (1970)
In the traditional sense of a collective, the Miss Rockaway Armada does not actually exist. The typical characteristics that describe such a joint venture—a specific locality, a single cohesive interest or mission, or a specific membership—do not apply. Formed in the summer months of 2006 and 2007, they converged in Minneapolis to construct a flotilla of rafts that journeyed down the Mississippi River. They continued to exhibit large-scale projects at several venues in the United States and in Europe including Exit Art in New York, MASS MoCA in North Adams, and most recently, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In each of these cases, different artists were involved and the context of where they were creating changed the vision of the collective. It is the convergence of different artists, reinventing themselves over and over again, that makes their existence unclassifiable and of-the-moment.
Although the planning process for this project originally began in 2009, the group remained loosely connected, mainly in the form of a virtual chat room for over a year. When beginning to really contemplate what the project would encompass—an undertaking involving the river, parades to neighborhoods outside of the community surrounding the Art Alliance, and a site-specific installation in the galleries themselves—they soon discovered that the intervening years spent apart had dimmed their common vision. Thus began a process of rediscovery and reconnection. Would their individual interests inform their work as a whole?
When the group, distanced by time and location, is reconstituted by a convening location unfamiliar to almost every participant (as none are native to Philadelphia), a process naturally evolves that has a certain level of non-determination, which became imperative to their working process. It was only once they were living and working in the city that they saw the potential that the natives do not; neglected neighborhoods, untapped resources, and even the surrounding waterways that its inhabitants ignore.
As with all of their projects, the process began with the discovery and selection of materials. Roaming the city for discarded wares (and working with local artist resource organizations) grew into an enthralling scavenger hunt for bric-a-brac, architectural debris, clothing, and furniture. This first step served as the basis for their somewhat unplanned, organically built creations. At the build site, one first observed three, then six and finally eleven floating structures destined to become a city of floating islands during their time on the Schuylkill River. What became apparent during this intense building phase was the act of imbuing objects that were considered useless with a value and significance; a powerful statement in and of itself that is profoundly political, reflecting their overall distaste for mass market consumerism and corporate culture.
Not only did the internal constituency of the group form their collective “doing” within the material reality of a specific urban landscape, but an equal influence were the local individuals and communities they encountered along the way. Throughout the four months in which the project evolved, impromptu performance nights, potluck dinners, and band practices for their events were joined with more planned community “craft nights” and other activities with local artists and collectives such as Space 1026 and FLUX Space. These communal events, unmediated by the art world or institutional influence, involved direct communication and engagement with the residents of Philadelphia that reinforced Miss Rockaway’s continual interest in a non-hierarchical exchange of information.
As part of The Miss Rockaway Armada’s public projects—on the street, the river, or in a park—animating their sculptures through performance is an extension of these planned activities. From theatrical skits and shadow puppetry to circus acts and large brass band performances, their work throughout this project was inherently participatory. Singing, storytelling, and allowing viewers to experience and realize the sculptural works as spaces to be embodied rather than admired, underpins the experiential rather than the passive “see what I made” tradition of artistic display. In essence, their handmade creations, energized through social interaction, defy categorization as performance art, sculpture, or as functional objects.
In the larger context of artistic and craft-based practices, the focus of the collective certainly refutes the traditional studio model of the finished end-product created through a specific set of skills mastered and polished over time. There is no end game here. It is the activity, rather than resulting objects, that creates the potential to disturb a fixed process that one often finds in the formal setting of a museum. From the practice of collecting salvage, to building seemingly implausible flotillas capable of transforming into anything from bike sculptures to parade floats, the Armada’s focus remained on the performative in the artistic process outside the confines of an institutional setting.
The final component of the project as an interactive installation did indeed take place in the gallery itself. As a project that was initially established through interaction and performance, the problem arises of erasing the communal and political character of what was originally created/presented as a direct form of communication to the public. Thus, in the art gallery context, it was imperative to preserve the original framework of its creation. However, the true reality is that this can never be fully resolved, as artistic intent will inevitably change or shift through any sort of display in a formal art gallery or museum setting. Many critics have discussed the methods of preserving the radical political potential of such projects. One such approach involves using printed collaterals, archiving, and diverse distribution networks as a means to preserve and disseminate information. Therefore, one of the strategies employed in the exhibition was documentation by the artists themselves as part of the installation. Photography and video of the events were integrated amongst the environment created from their previously discarded wares. In addition, virtual documentation through the website (rockawayatpaa.com) and the catalog allowed for the focal point of the project to remain on the performative, adding to its visceral impact. Ultimately, exhibition display then becomes a partial remnant of the activities that preceded it.
A second means to avoid decontextualization within the gallery setting is through a refusal of classification that often happens in the confines of designated spaces for formal display. The emphasis of the installation as an interactive environment refutes any notion of the refined, completed or functional object, typically labeled and lighted, thus inviting the visitor to reconsider the ways in which we experience art. By deconstructing the found materials over and over again and reinterpreting them as a response to the building—including its entryways, hallways, and stairwells—the visitor, who may or may not have viewed the public events that took place prior to the gallery installation, encounters these materials in a new light. This unlocks the limitless potential of their original source material, breathing new life once again into what was ostensibly trash.
Utopian is an often-used word to describe the ethos of Miss Rockaway. As the artists described during their formation in 2006, “[I]n our travels we intend to share stories and to solicit dialogue around subversive and constructive ways of living. We are a group of intrepids who believe in a hands-on, live-by-example approach to creating change within our culture. . . We want to be a living, kicking model of an entirely different world.” The world they have created in Philadelphia certainly lives up those expectations; and while Miss Rockaway may vanish for awhile, waiting to once again be reinvented, one hopes their utopian vision, made manifest, will have an impact on the city for quite some time.
Melissa Caldwell
Director of Exhibitions and Curator of “Let Me Tell You About a Dream I Had”
Robert Morris, “Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects” Exhibition, 1970. The New York Cultural Center, New York. Retrieved July 18, 2001 from http://www.ubu.com/papers/morris_statements.html
Events included the Flotilla Performances on Schuylkill River on August 20 and August 21 at the Walnut Street Dock; a procession to University City on September 3, ending at Clark Park at with a variety show; and a second Procession through Kensington on September 10, ending at FLUX Space with performances.
See Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch, “Craft Hard Die Free: Radical Curatorial Strategies for Craftivism,” Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria Elena Buszek (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 204-221.
Part of this strategy was to create an alternative to the standard exhibition catalog format by including commissioned prints and photos by individual members of the collective presented in the form of postcards and posters in various sizes.
Miss Rockaway Armada (2006), “Project Information.” Retrieved July 7, 2011 from http://www.missrockaway.org/wordpress/project-info/
Miss Rockaway Armada
The Miss Rockaway Armada is a group of performers and artists from across the country, including members of other artist collectives such as the Toyshop Collective, Visual Resistance, The Amateurs, The Floating Neutrinos, among many others. In the summer months of 2006 and 2007, the Armada converged in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to construct a flotilla of rafts that journeyed down the Mississippi River. With the intent to create a new sustainable mode of travel as well as to present programs regarding arts and environmental issues, the project stopped in towns along the river to present musical performances and vaudeville variety-theater.
Since 2007, the Armada has continued to exhibit large-scale projects at several venues in the United States and Europe that focus on the use of sustainable resources and recycled materials to build their projects. Recent exhibitions include “E.P.A. (Environmental Performance Actions)” at Exit Art, New York, NY (2007); and “Being Here is Better than Wishing We’d Stayed” at Mass MoCA (2008-09). At MASS MoCA, the Miss Rockaway Armada transformed the Hunter Center Mezzanine into a dynamic, interactive space. Using wood and other materials salvaged from their campus, the group crafted an environment that exuded the aesthetic, vision, and essence of the Armada’s experiences on the Mississippi River.
Most recently, Miss Rockaway participated in the exhibition “Heartland” at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The interdisciplinary project focused on the art and music of the geographical area of the Midwestern United States. Heartland consisted of a major group exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum and a musical program in Muziekgebouw Frits Philips, and included debates, lectures, a photo exhibition, a magazine and publications. For the project, the Miss Rockaway Armada presented an interactive installation at the MU Gallery with various musical performances and a shadow puppet show within the installation. For a one-day performance, members created a series of rafts and canoes that floated alongside the Van Abbemuseum. After Eindhoven, the exhibition traveled to University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in Fall 2009.
In addition to workshops and performances developed for specific exhibitions, the collective has been invited to lecture and present slide shows at many venues throughout the United States, such as Cooper Union, New York, NY; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Exit Art, New York, NY; and P.S.1 MoMA; among many others.
Members of the Miss Rockaway Armada have branched out to various additional projects, including two collaborations with the artist SWOON for “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, ” at Deitch Projects, New York, NY, which included seven floating sculptures on the East River in Long Island City; and “Swimming Cities of Serenissima,” where participants navigated from the Slovenian coast to the Venice Biennale along the Adriatic Sea and participated in performances in the Biennale. Members of the collective are also featured in the experimental film Flood Tide (2008) by Armada member Todd Chandler, which tells the story of a group of musicians and their journey down a river in search of an imagined utopia in the midst of ecological collapse.
Currently, members of the collective are participating in “Swimming Cities: Ocean of Blood”, which is an art raft project on the Ganges River.