Hidden Truths

Hidden Truths is a two-part project by artist Pamela Bannos, including site-specific and web-based components. It was funded by Northwestern University, where Bannos is a senior lecturer in the Department of Art Theory and Practice. She recently did extensive research into the history of the southern section of Lincoln Park, which is the site of the now defunct Chicago City Cemetery and the Catholic Cemetery. In the 1850s-60s the city resolved to cease interments along the lake shore, move the existing burials to "suburban" plots (now Rosehill, Graceland and Oak Woods Cemeteries) and establish a park, renamed in 1865 in memory of recently assassinated Lincoln. There are several of these painted aluminum signs around the park, commemorating historical figures and events surrounding the cemetery sites. Please check out the Hidden Truths website for tons of interesting information, interviews and images of all the signs, maps, and much more... After seeing two of the signs and reading all about the project on the website, my understanding of the park has profoundly changed. As it turns out, not all the skeletal remains of people buried in what is now Lincoln Park were removed. In fact, many remains have been found over the years in various phases of construction and renovation of the park grounds, the Chicago History Museum and the surrounding neighborhood. The awareness of this history, and of the possibility of human remains beneath my feet as I casually stroll through the park imbues my walk with a new sense of poignancy. The pristine green lawns and lush landscaping are nourished by lives long decayed and forgotten. The back yard of the city's elite still has secrets skeletons to reveal, and stories to tell. In honor of those stories, I'll dedicate my next few entries to those who remain below the ground as I focus on more public sculpture in Lincoln Park.

Alicia Frantz

I drive by this memorial installation on Division St. under the Kennedy Expressway viaduct all the time. There are a number of these bikes-as-memorials of bikers killed in traffic on the city streets in Chicago. This one was recently refreshed with a clean coat of white paint and new fabric flowers. The bike, chained to the railing of the walkway under the north side of the viaduct, commemorates the death of Alicia Frantz on June 3, 2005, her 32nd birthday. I presume it was the bike she was riding when she was killed, but I'm not sure. Under her name and dates of birth and death is the epitaph "She heard everyday sounds as music." As I recently strained to catch a picture of the memorial with my cell phone as traffic moved forward into a green light, I flashed on a driver, a once-careless driver, someone like I was in that moment... A driver who has been driving for a long time, and sometimes takes for granted a certain amount of space around his/car that serves as the only buffer for swerves or strays, slow-stops or quick-starts... A driver who neglects to check a blind spot, a driver who sneezes, or a driver with the sun in his/her eyes... Maybe a driver using a cell phone... A driver who somehow, for some reason, for any reason, doesn't see the diminutive bicyclist in the road until she is already fallen. But the driver does hear a sound. Not an everyday sound, not music, but a sound too quickly muffled to be fully comprehended at first. A sound with a startling, pulse-quickening attack, and a silent sustain that never ends. I keep imagining the sound of metal and flesh, bone and asphalt, and the vocal chords of Alicia Frantz vibrating for the last time. The thought of that sound keeps me more alert when driving now, not on the cell phone, glasses always on, blind spots double-checked, blinkers utilized correctly, and buffer space respected. I don't want to be that driver. I don't want to hear that sound.

Elevators

"Elevator" by Mike Baur is a public sculpture commission awarded by the Lincoln Park Community Art Initiative in 2005, with sponsorship from General Iron. General Iron has a large scrap-iron processing facility less than one block away from the site of this piece at the corner of Marcey and Clifton, between the swank of the Lincoln Park stretch of Clybourn St. shopping district and the stank of the North River industrial corridor (no river walks here, folks). There is a steady stream of trucks, both semi- and stake-side, in and out of the scrap facility, bringing a strange and eclectic procession of objects, all bound for a giant shredder. The various metal objects, from cyclone fences and bedsprings to old cars and I-beams, are lifted onto conveyor belts and moved around the facility by big yellow crane-arms that resemble the arm on the sculpture. However, the dynamic power of the working machinery inside the yard is far more interesting than the stagnant stuff called art sitting on a low, shimmied pedestal on the corner. The energy inside the iron facility is both destructive and creative, breaking down once manufactured objects into a reconfigurable substance, which will in its turn be made into something useful, like, say cyclone fences and bedsprings, new cars and I-beams...Somehow, standing there witnessing part of that cycle of steel I came to imagine how a 1960 viewer of Jean Tinguely's "Homage to New York," the metamatic sculpture that self-destructed in front of the MOMA, must have felt. Awed and critical: Awed at the enormity, the audacity, the expectable spectacle; Critical of the flaws--flaws in the actual process/performance of the thing you are witnessing, and, more importantly, the flaws in the beings who created the system that kills itself. The longer I stood there, the more the scene became a strangely unreal, digitally animated, post-apocalyptic scene from Pixar's Wall-E. But the people in the trucks and cranes were not. They were alive, now, today, Chicagoans at work. Finally, I walked back over to "Elevator." Now I see it for what it is: a prediction. It's one artist's formal play with metal and concrete parts resembling machinery, yes, but it's also a prediction that someday, the strong yellow crane arms will all seize up and rust. The energy that runs the cycle of steel today will cease its machinations, kill itself, and by its very existence, commemorate its own death...
I wondered where the people in the trucks and cranes will be.

Breathe Oxygen

Here is a little-known public sculpture I noticed today in Humboldt Park. It's a larger-than-life concrete snail (about 4 feet long, 2 feet tall) nestled in a strip of garden on the south-eastern edge of the lagoon, behind a black metal railing. On the side of the snail are etched the words "breathe oxygen," possibly the title of the piece, or an exhortation to passers-by to enjoy the fresh air of the green surroundings. At first, this piece seemed to be a simple garden figure; a slow muncher of leaves amidst a peaceful garden to be enjoyed by all. However, a consideration of the existence of this particular form in this particular place suggests a surprisingly political undertone. On closer inspection, we can see that the snail is actually wearing a human mask. The eyes are closed as though sleeping, jaw jutting forward, mouth poised to exhale. The face resembles some Mayan masks. The neighborhoods around Humboldt Park have a significant population of Puerto Rican and Mexican Americans, so with the appearance of the mask, I wondered if there weren't something significant, something symbolic about this snail. It turns out the snail is one of the important symbols of the EZLN, a revolutionary group historically based in Chiapas, Mexico, but spread throughout Mexico, Latin America and even gone global through adept use of the internet. According to Wikipedia, the EZLN ideology combines aspects of socialism, anarchism, libertarianism and indigenous Mayan political thought, though now the group aligns itself with a general resistance to globalization and native peoples' claims to local lands and resources. For the EZLN, the snail is a symbol of their method of organizing, el caracol--the organization is said to spiral and grow like the shell of the snail. Images of snails appear on EZLN shirts, posters, embroidery and murals, sometimes wearing the black mask the EZLN fighters have worn since their 1994 uprising, which was timed in protest of the NAFTA. After reading this, I began to think of the snail sculpture in Humboldt Park as a sleeping sign of the potential for revolution in unexpected places. Alexander Von Humboldt, after whom the park was named, is one of the most revered minds in science, having contributed hundreds of discoveries, publications, and inventions to many different disciplines of science. In fact, he even invented a device to measure the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in air, for use in studies of altitude sickness and plant respiration. Perhaps the inscription, "breathe oxygen" could be a reference to Humboldt's device or his studies. It could be a simple reminder that people of native cultures didn't need European scientists and technology to tell them humans can breathe better where there is an abundance of plants. Much of Humboldt's groundbreaking work came during his noted travels through Latin America. He wrote extensively about the natural wonders of the new world, but often ignored the importance of the native people already inhabiting the areas he studied. These facts connected in my mind the snail as a symbol to its particular location in Humboldt Park, and I started to think of this green patch of ground and water not just as a place for a leisurely stroll and breath of fresh air, but as an environment surrounded by concrete, but nonetheless fecund in its potential to produce oxygen, and along with it perhaps, even revolution?