The City We Bought

Providence's Psychogeographic Revolution

BY DANA GOLDSTEIN

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THE PROVIDENCE PLACE MALL is everywhere. From the top of College Hill, the mall sits proudly in opposition to the gleaming white neoclassicism of the Rhode Island State House. It opened in 1999 at a time when the city was searching for a much-needed economic miracle. In many camps, Providence Place is regarded as a success: it pulls approximately 15 million shoppers into the city each year.

But for the artists who make up the Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies (PIPS), the immense brick and glass structure imposes itself not only on the city's skyline and economic landscape, but also on the psyches of Providence inhabitants. The mall, PIPS members say, represents one of the primary problems with which psychogeography is concerned: the commercialization of public spaces.

Just Milling Around

27 Simms-the West Side site where PIPS is headquartered-represents an attempt to create a different type of public space, one that nurtures community among the waste products of the post-industrial city. A complex of brick mill buildings surrounding a dirt courtyard, 27 Simms is managed by the non-profit Woonasquatucket Valley Community Build, whose main project is the industrial arts collective the Steel Yard, which operates a large, garage-like studio in the complex.

The warehouse neighborhood surrounding 27 Simms is technically zoned as part of downtown Providence, said PIPS member Meredith Younger RISD'03, "but we prefer to think of ourselves as part of Olneyville."

Just as in neighboring Olneyville, artists here are trying to create a vibrant community in the abandoned mill buildings that are relics of Providence's industrial past. In addition to the Steel Yard and PIPS, 27 Simms is home to the Monohasset Mill Project (MMP), a new loft development managed by Clay Rockefeller B'03 and three partners. The MMP is developing the mill building on the western edge of 27 Simms into live/work spaces for Providence artists, and has already sold many of the 38 apartments-one of them to Younger. Ten units in the building are federally subsidized low-income housing starting at the price of $125,000. All potential buyers must submit an art portfolio for review, as well as proof that a significant portion of their income derives from participation in the visual, literary or performing arts.

The MMP mill building was constructed in 1866 and housed Armington and Sims Manufacturing, a company that built engines for Thomas Edison. Providence's past as an industrial manufacturing town means the city is teeming with abandoned buildings like this one. And the PIPS members-they call themselves PIPSters-think the mills are what set Providence apart from other cities, inspiring artists like themselves to stick around after graduating from RISD and Brown.

"The allure for a lot of people staying in Providence is the mills," said PIPSter David Allyn RISD MFA'03. "They're prime territory, fertile ground for artists to come and try to activate space, reawaken space."

Can I Have My City Back?

PIPS was founded at RISD by John McGurk RISD'04, who lived in Florence before beginning his undergraduate studies in Providence. "I did a lot of walking over there, and then one day, someone handed me a big book on the Situationists," McGurk said, referring to the radical 1960s artistic and intellectual movement led by French theorist Guy Debord. For the Situationists, "psychogeography" meant transforming the city into a space in which each inhabitant could become an artist, shedding his or her identity as a mere worker.

When McGurk arrived in Providence in 2000, he learned about the controversy brewing around the proposed redevelopment of Eagle Square, where a community of RISD graduates was living and working in what they called Fort Thunder-the former American Woolen mill. New York-based developer Feldco wanted to tear down Fort Thunder and construct a strip mall. After a year of wrangling between the arts community, Feldco, and the city government, a compromise of sorts was reached: Feldco agreed to base the design of its strip mall on the authentic 19th century mills of Eagle Square, but Fort Thunder was dismantled and the artists tossed out.

Fort Thunder, which existed from 1995 to 2001, would "be an international mega art phenomenon" today had "those kids not been interrupted," Younger laments. "They had already received international attention." And if projects like 27 Simms are successful in reinvigorating the West Side art scene, Providence artists might again receive that type of attention-surely an attractive prospect to graduates of RISD, one of the nation's premiere-and infamously competitive-art schools.

Like a lot of young RISD and Brown-affiliated artists, the Fort Thunder catastrophe was the event that committed McGurk to Providence and its vibrant, but struggling, art scene. He descended from College Hill and engaged the city. Providence, McGurk said, "is the type of city where you still feel like you can make a difference."

Rockefeller, the Monohasset Mill developer, was similarly distracted from academic life by the Eagle Square controversy. A Visual Arts and American Civilization concentrator at Brown, he took time off from school and began attending city council meetings, where he witnessed "a closed system. . Everything was planned and laid out before the public was invited to participate."

Rockefeller remembers a lot of discussions in Providence at the time about the latent potential of the city's artistic community. "I thought, fuck this potential," he said. "Are we going to constantly be on the verge without this ever happening?"

Since graduating from Brown, Rockefeller has made change happen through developing Monohasset Mill as an alternative to SoHo-style luxury lofts. His activism includes a hard-nosed view of the economic realities of development-the residential component of his project has attracted funding from the Providence Economic Development Corporation, the Bank of Rhode Island, the Providence Heritage Society and several private donors. Rockefeller had hoped Monohasset Mill would encompass more public gallery and performing arts space, but has learned the hard way, he said, to temper his idealism with the reality of having to turn a profit.

Resisting Urban Suburbia

The PIPSters take a more radical approach. Psychogeography, McGurk said, "gives urbanism subversive teeth." Like the Situationists, the PIPSters believe art can create revolution. But while the Situationists were leaders in the 1968 student uprising in Paris, PIPS flies "under the radar," according to Allyn, trying to create change "from within."

A group of RISD graduates basing an urban renewal movement on failed Situationist theory might seem like the height of naiveté. The revolutionary potential of 1968 Paris fizzled out, after all, when Marxist labor unions and radical student groups failed to form a political coalition-just one piece of evidence contributing to a historical record suggesting that privileged students and artists often fail to make change when they assume their ideologies speak for, and to, the average person.

Indeed, the PIPSters are self-conscious when it comes to their relationship with Situationist thought. McGurk laughed when asked about the Situationists' destructive tendencies, and referred the question back to Younger. "There is no creation without destruction, and there can't be any destruction without creation," she said seriously, but then smiled. "PIPS has a more lighthearted approach, but there is a place for vandalism."

In one of their first public art actions, on October 19, 2003, the PIPSters stormed Waterfire, luring spectators away from the staged spectacle of the festival and toward an abandoned bridge directly behind the Providence Place Mall. PIPS members created a "gallery" on the bridge, with Younger acting the part of a "tour guide."

And in the event that most resembled an act of civil disobedience, PIPS staged a "Progressive Runway Project" last May at the Providence Place Mall, dressing approximately 40 people in haute couture designs constructed from recycled materials. The models pranced through the mall trailed by fascinated shoppers and a bewildered escort of 10 security guards. Because of the event, the mall has added a new rule to its list of regulations, prohibiting any activity that detracts from shopping, Allyn said.

The Progressive Runway Project undoubtedly grabbed the attention of shoppers and the mall authorities, but as a result, Providence Place is now a little bit less of a public space-considering the new regulation, it is unlikely the mall would allow another

spectacle of its kind to take place. Still, Younger said PIPS will never "ask permission" to stage an event. The point, she said, istthat "we shouldn't have to."

The psychogeographic critique implicit in the Progressive Runway Project is that in order to realize their creative potential, people should-and even need-to be distracted from shopping. This type of urban activism creates a bit of a contradiction. Cities, after all, develop because they are commercial centers, places where people gather to buy and sell. But when it comes to choosing buyers for public real estate, there is no doubt that cities like Providence are adopting elements of suburban planning. The identical luxury housing units of the new Jefferson at Providence Place development, as well as Providence Place Mall itself, mimic suburban living with its subdivisions, gated communities and one-stop, indoor shopping.

"I'm scared," Rockefeller said when asked to envision Providence ten to 15 years in the future. "I don't want to live in an urban suburbia."

Reconceptualizing The Renaissance

Though critics like the PIPSters see the Providence Place Mall as a culturally bereft eyesore, it has been praised by both former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci and current Mayor David Cicilline as a leading contributor to Providence's much-touted "renaissance." Even the PIPSters admit that the mall has pumped money into the city. But when assessing Providence's progress, we should "talk about creativity instead of economics," Allyn said.

Younger added, "The exchange of ideas between people is the most important part of cities."

PIPS is currently planning its second annual Provflux, an event from May 27 to 29 designed to transform Providence into a mecca for the exchange of ideas on urban living. Although the PIPSters were tight-lipped on the conference's exact schedule, they did say their call for Provflux proposals had attracted responses from artists, architects, theorists, writers and poets from around the world. Provflux will feature tennis ball golf courses set up throughout the city, an outdoor Progressive Runway Project, a documentary about squatting in lost urban spaces, alternative tours of Providence with asphalt stencils as guides and a "24-hour art riot" that will include changing the city environment by putting up artwork, moving things around and otherwise transforming public space.

The PIPSters hope the event will be a chance for artists and activists like themselves to network across cities. The end goal of this type of "action-based" artistic work, Younger said, is to "entice people with each event to get involved" with the artistic and political life that constitutes a city's public life.

McGurk said he used to become frustrated when his RISD classmates complained that Providence was boring, thinking, "You've only walked from your apartment to studio in the past six months."

His advice for Providence residents-particularly Brown and RISD students-is to "put down the book and take a walk. This is a quirky little city."

Dana Goldstein B'06 detracts from the shopping experience

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