The Mall of American Art
The Scheme Vol. 1, Ed. 4: Your own secret mall apartment.
Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes.
For the past two months, I’ve been trying to work my way through Ken Burns’ The American Revolution. Right now, I find it a bit too intense and violent to take much in at a time. But last week, Burns was speaking at The Met, so we went to see him talk about his process which was a great way to re-engage with the work. I know he’s on tour so if you get a chance, I recommend it.
What was helpful about this lecture was to look at the history through the art the used. No cameras back then, so little material to provide concrete truth. The irony of today when there are too many cameras and too much material and we still can’t agree on concrete truth. One image that took me was a watercolor they commissioned from Greg Harland showing that:
The American colonies had a wide variety of people living in them including French Huguenots, Germans, Scots, Scots-Irish, Indigenous people as well as enslaved Africans and freed African Americans.
When I started grad school years ago, we had to give our reason for enrolling. I said "to confront my ignorance.” It’s a passion of mine, to reveal to myself that which I wasn’t aware of. It try to keep it an active practice or I can feel my world and my brain shrinking. Full disclosure, I thought the Revolutionary War ended with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I’m quite sure, my father, who was a history major at Princeton is raging at me from his grave.
I’ve never heard Burns speak, but he is feisty! He as a fierce defender of history and it was inspiring to witness. As we’ve been working our way through the series, I continually ask my husband what he thinks the people who died for America would think of it now. I like to say, “do you think they died so people could scroll tiktok?” Imagine. There are so many letters witnessing the revolution from every perspective listed above that watercolor. Though we like to try to simplify the narrative about white men, not paying taxes (still true today!), there was so much more imagination of possibility from every group. In the discussion at the Met, possibility is a word they agreed on.
Which brings me to The Secret Mall Apartment. If you haven’t seen it, call in a sick day and indulge yourself. I’m pretty sure this is the type of activity that anyone who actually sacrificed for the idea of America would be pleased with. It is about possibility. It’s also about the space that’s meant to hold up the facade, but not be seen. That is the story of America. The mall wants you to believe in the 4th of July brouhaha. The secret mall apartment, invites you into the truth of possibility, into an opportunity to think about how you see your role, your contributions, and how you live within someone else’s reality, someone else’s imagination.
We’re all scheming (VISION) in one way or another. The question is how (VALUES) you’re doing it. Are you setting up shop next to the food court because those “best practices” indicate that’s the way it works? Or are you secretly subverting common wisdom and creating possibility for yourself and others to creatively thrive?
What we lose when we simplify mythology, is the ability to expand our awareness and grow. We get caught up in the bias of the binary. In our over simplification, we fail to see the space of possibility that’s been there all along, waiting for us to emerge.