Photo above: The Powerhouse Productions Project: the Squash House
The Powerhouse Productions Project develops empty houses with and for the community and the neighborhood; the Play House and the Squash House are examples. Turning loss into opportunity is something Detroit residents have learned the hard way. Today, such initiatives make Detroit a laboratory of practices that inspire other cities as well – cities that envision a future beyond the neoliberal social and economic agreement. That said, practices that foreground community values both honor the unforgotten dream of the activists of the 1960s and provide tools of engagement for today’s generation of residents, who are collectively re-imagining and re-inventing their neighborhoods, one by one, to create a more resilient city by relying on local knowledge. The realization that we are connected across generations and across the world was a gift that we, as passionate champions of similar initiatives in Hamburg, celebrated both in Chicago and Detroit.
Our Detroit encounters are listed in chronological order.
The Hinterlands Collective, at the Play House
Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope, Design 99 and the Powerhouse Productions Project, at the Play House, the Power House, Ride It Sculpture Park, the Squash House and the Jar House
Eva Zielinski, designer, FILTER Detroit resident
Faina Lerman and Graem Whyte, Popps Packing
Richard Feldman, the Boggs Center
Wayne Curtis, Feedom Freedom
Kate Daughdrill, Burnside Farm
Chido Johnson and his students of Installation, Site and Performance class at the College for Creative Studies, discussion and exchange about research methodologies in the everyday artistic practice with Design for the Living World class
Barbara Logan and Pete Werbe, The Fifth Estate
Techno Museum
Jeri Stroupe, Economic Development Wayne State University
Communal dinner at FILTER Detroit, Hamtramck
We stayed at George Rahme‘s house in Hamtramck
Design for the Living World, HFBK 