Ensemble 15

Soul Food & More ... From a Tale of Charleston to a Tale for Reparations

Memorialization? Monuments in Action? Imagining?

2006- ...
Size Varies

Charleston Soul Food Culture: one of the prime victims of gentrification in a city built, fed and emotionally shaped by enslaved African-Americans. Soul Food restaurants in town are, one at a time, succumbing to high rent, luxury tourism, a general hostility to the vernacular and self-inflicted indifference.

Martha Lou : In Charleston, a food institution serving Low Country specialties “to the world”, as the owner herself wrote on the public notice she pinned on the closed door of her condemned restaurant, after 37 years of steady service. She was 91 . She died three months later.

“A Landmark” she wrote? How will it be memorialized now that Charleston’s Board of Architectural Review voted unanimously to approve the clearing of what once was Martha Lou’s Kitchen. The restaurant served soul food for decades.

Bertha’s Kitchen

Gentrification: a mode of urban development which, left in the hands of private investors, favors luxury habitat over affordable housing. The economic impossibility for working populations to live where or close to where they work is a most disturbing sign of gentrification.

Urban Farming: an updated way for urban environments to augment nature in their neighborhoods: existing parks, empty parcels, abandoned industrial sites become opportunities to grow fruits and vegetables and even raise fish, in a spirit of circular economy. Buy Local!

Question-Relay: mode of dialogue designed to prioritize active listening over cross-talking. Audience members are invited, in a game of musical chairs, to sit in one of two designated seats, take a question, answer it and return to the listeners circle.

Elevated Common: an accessible public space, urban or not, (re)designed to remain well above rising waters, and destined to accommodate general socio-economic needs for shared community activities, to facilitate belonging, in a collective spirit of
citizenship.

Tablescapes: multifunctional props designed – in Ensemble 15 – to both, carry 3D artifacts [in this case representations of cityscapes] and offer visitors an open surface where to consult documents, write comments or gather around – why not with the artist(s)?

From “The tale of Charleston” (of Tiny Culinary) to “a tale for Reparations”, IMAGININGS by Jean-Marie Mauclet.

RECYCLING- REPURPOSING?

Good Trouble

Racism was a monster, led by Pam Gibbs and Kit Loney

Zine Culture, led by Rayn Rayney

ART LESSONS …

ART CONCEPTS?

Updates/ Comments/ Corrections/ Additions

EMAIL US TO ADD

TO THE COMMON SPACE

IN THE BUBBLES

Updates/ Comments/ Corrections/ Additions

Updates/ Comments/ Corrections/ Additions

 

Updates/ Comments/ Corrections/ Additions

Updates/ Comments/ Corrections/ Additions

And more!  To be added:

    – WEEKLY PODCASTS,  I Like My Tea Sweet  at OHMRADIO963.org, an open forum for discussions, questions; a tool for collective organizing and porch-like conversations about art and culture with Victoria Rae and Rayn of TINYisPOWERFUL. Every Thursdays at 2PM.

      FILM MINI-LESSONS with Hood Ball   “Hood Ball” Jan 24, 2024, is an original short film by middle school students of James Simons Public Montessori in collaboration with  YoArt!, and filmmaker/multi-media artist Daniel Green.

  RESERVOIR  

NEWSLETTERS

A CIRCLE OF ADVISORS   which has now given room to a series of “TINYisPOWERFUL investigations”

– A new ARTIST/ACTIVIST IN RESIDENCE program 

  and more …  and …

DONATIONS WELCOME

And see/read Rayn Rainey

Projects