The Department of Public Address

Providence Mystery Poles

2007-03-18T12:44:00.001-07:00

These mystery poles are all over Providence.

Central High
Originally uploaded by paranoid listener.

Westminster Pedestrian Mall
Originally uploaded by paranoid listener.

DSC00107
Originally uploaded by paranoid listener.

Empire Street
Originally uploaded by paranoid listener.

Broad and Pearl
Originally uploaded by paranoid listener.

When asked what they are, people usually repond confusedly:
"What pole?" "See what?"
Some people see them and tend to have the following hypotheses:
The first guess is that they are old gaslight fixtures
The second guess is that they are old street heaters
The third is that they are vents from the underworld

The first two guesses seem rather romantic, particularily the idea that the streets would be heated.
It would certainly be an incentive for public hanging out in the winter...
The vent idea is supported by a very shiny modern looking thing that has the same double screened openings and is in front of the recently renovated RISD building, facing the Turks head building at the splitting/confluence of Westminster and Weybosset.

Vent (?) outside RISD Library
Originally uploaded by paranoid listener.

Link to flickr set of Mystery Poles around Providence (click the question mark):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7324381@N05/sets/72157600007165024/

Public pile on art gallery wall

2007-03-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

Opening for the student juried art show at Brown University, in the List art building (3/16/2007). There was a huge pile of clothing and luggage along the wall. It seems that people there were feeling private enough to comingle belongings at this public opening.

hello, im being abused

2007-03-16T11:26:00.001-07:00

This is a sign at the dispatch window of Brown University's Department of PUBLIC Safety:http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Public_Safety/
hello, im being abused
Originally uploaded by paranoid listener.

Fieldwork from Kennedy Plaza 02-20-07- Continued

2007-03-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

32 Responses

- "The general populous- People"
- "Bathrooms"
- "No reaction to it"
- "People" (x5)
- "I don't speak english"
- "I don't know, I gotta go," "Big hurry," "No time"(x3)
- "Sorry" (x3)
- "Smokers" (2 kids)
- "The Public? What public? The country, it stinks. Politicians stink too. Put that down- Stinks"
- "Needs work"
- "People, taxpayers, hardworking people just trying to get by. The voice, they elect officials and hope they do their best. Students, teachers...all economic brackets and all ages."
- Points to Kennedy Plaza (RIPTA worker)
- "Pretty much everybody as a whole"
- "The general population"
- "I think it should be worldly"
- "Mass, community"
- "Open to everybody"
- "The city, Parks"
- Everybody
- "The public is us...public parking"
- "Open, free"
- "Open to the People"
- "Not Private"
- "Access to everybody"

Notes from Feb. 20 Fieldwork: Eagle to Eagle

2007-03-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

1. Abandoned houses: Public? Private?
2.Public uniforms not for the public.
3.The public as place for unplanned encounter.
4.'Community spaces', libraries, prerevitalization downtown Providence.
5. The Eagle: "The Empire Never Ended"

1. On our way to Kennedy Plaza to ask people just what the "public" is, we walked from Eagle Square downtown. Our second stop was an abandoned house, with the door open. We entered to observe what evedences of usage there was in this unofficially open interior space. Artifacts within were predictably the detritus of life that is swept away in the spatial public of the city.
Clothes, beverage containers, drug paraphenalia, and turds. One room in the house had a layered wallpaper-turd toilet system. Turds were covered by successive layers of wallpaper stripped from the wall. Turds have a very private connotation in the modern public, even in an abandoned house there are efforts to further enfold, privatize them...

house with open door for public hidey activity

visit from psychadelic wallpaper ghost
Visit from psychadelic wallpaper ghost

wallpaper layering toilet

Wallpaper layering toilet

2. Continuing along down to Broadway we stopped at a uniform store that specialized in gear for public employees, primarily postal workers and police officers. It was clear that these were not available for public consumption and we politely replied that we could not be helped and went back out on the street.

3. Being outside in the zone of motion between here and there, the aspect of public as meeting ground was proven to us by a string of aquaintances and then meeting some friends on their way to get coughy. In this encounter was proven the further aspect of "public meeting" as a place to initiate communication and make new actions out of the intersecting motions of initially discreet entities. From the public street we went to a public extablishement and hijacked our pals outing with our discourse about the public. This detour furnished us with some interesting perspectives on the history of 'community spaces', Providence street life, and libraries.

4. The conversation got going with a bit of talk about where do we feel public and where do we feel private, and the appropriation or creation of semi-private "parochial" spaces by groups of folks. A friend visiting from out of town described their experience with a 'Community Space' that was conceived and established by members of a certain community, expressing the interest of serving the entire community (the public). This seems to have been largely unsuccessful, and the giant space with shows, a women's diy health clinic, art studios, etc. was patronized mostly by people who already knew each other, and the broader public rarely felt comfortable enough to enter.
Another friend commented that outreach is a necessary and difficult activity to disrupt this undesired domination of a 'free' space by a certain group. They also described a historical vision of downtown Providence in the recent pre-revitalization past as very active with street life; cruising, trashcan fires, drug deals, all kinds of socioeconomic relationships being played out on the public streets. But this was seen as exclusionary, and not safe or desirable for many other groups of people. The mechanism for controlling this was not outreach, but "cleaning up downtown".
They also had worked at the Providence Public Library. From our research and thoughts, it seems that public libraries are the freest of interior Public (run by the government) spaces. We were told that only about "one person per month" had to be escorted out of the library, and that in general people could be there all day and do whatever insidey behaviors they wished (one of the most troubesome being the perrenial overdosing in the locked bathroom).

And then we went on our sperate ways, the public encounter that led to a new, unplanned set of actions and communications gave way to the intitial mission of asking people just what the public is.

5. One of the people asked what public is down at Kennedy Plaza went into a lengthy diatribe about "the Eagle"; problems of imperialism and racism, that we are still living in Alexander the Great times and the Public is not safe for black folks. While talking to him, he got a call on his mobile phone, and I asked some other people what public is. Then the guy got off the phone and struck up a conversation with the two other guys who had I just spoken with. I kept on asking more folks as the three fellas talked for awhile and exchanged phone numbers.
I mentally patted myself on the back for facilitating a meeting.

Idea on the Individual's perspective of public

2007-03-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

One of the primary notions of the Department of Public Address is the notion of the public as the realm of communication between various "private" entities, whether they be individuals of groups. Starting from the perspecitve of an individual, everything outside of self is to varying degrees "public". In a typical amerincan home (assumin g cohabitation) there are private and "common" spaces, in whihc different levels of agency are available to the individual. Extending from there, each person (and groups of people) has various locations such as work, school, regularily patronized coughy shops, bars, recreation centers, internet forums etc. that they are familiar with. These spaces are more public than home, but less public than an unfamiliar establishment, or a plaza (assuming the individual is not a habitual plaza goer). Thus we can conceptualize "the public" from an individual's perspective as a series of broadening spheres of varying privateness/publicness.

Fieldwork 02-20-07. Kennedy Plaza, "What is Public?"

2007-02-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

On February 20, 2007, around 5 or 6 in the afternoon, DPA workers asked everyone that they could "What is public?" or "What do you consider 'Public'?" or "What do you think of when you hear the word 'public'?"

Responses (multiples (x3) represent number of people with same response)
from 57 members of the public:

-"Public Knowledge"
-"For everybody"
-"No time", "We are busy right now", "Sorry, in a rush" (x9)
-Hand wave or head shake dismissal (x4)
-"People" (x2)
-"Everything"
-"This here, restaurant or something..."
-"Without or with common ownership; can't be anyone's"
-"Non-private"
-"Here" (Kennedy Plaza)(x4)
-"Bathrooms, meal sites"
-"Dunno, don't really think"
-"What is public?"
-"Everyone"
-"Crowded place"
-"People of society, culture"
-"I dunno" (x3)
-"The city, everybody"
-"Everybody together"
-"Open to everyone"
-"Available to anybody"
-"Its ok, I guess."
-"I'm not interested"
-"Gotta catch my bus"
-"No thanks"
-"Free"
-"Outside, no privacy"
-"Where anyone can go"
-"Supported and used by the public"
-"Open to all"
-"Everybody, society"
-"Publication, making things available for common presentation and discussion"

Welcome to the Department of Public Address!

2007-02-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Department of Public Address, a multilateral Agency with the designated function of
exploring and redefining the conception and actuality of the PUBLIC, in all of its forms--sphere, realm, domain, space, people, place...