The Ghana Think Tank, Rhizome 2010 proposal
Project Description
Background
In 2006, John Ewing, Christopher Robbins and Matey Odonkor formed the Ghana Think Tank in response to their experiences working in international development. We sent a set of US community development briefs to ad-hoc think tanks formed in Ghana, Cuba and El Salvador. The problems addressed in these briefs ranged from broad, societal issues (Homelessness and Obesity) to more personal, light-hearted quandaries (Bo Can't Dance and Powerpoint). After receiving the think tanks' solutions, we set about formulating specific plans of actions based on these responses, and began to enact them.
The project was an attempt to transpose parts of one culture into another, to take a solution generated in one context and apply it elsewhere. The hope was that the friction caused by these applications would generate interesting results, and that we could learn something further about our own assumptions as well as those of our counterparts in the other countries.
Actions so far
By the end of the first phase of the project, following the directives received from the various think tanks, we had established a Rhode Island SDS branch (a radical student activist movement established in the 1960s) with members in three local universities, set up public games of street chess between neighboring but isolated cultures, replaced the powerpoint presentations of our lives required with social theatre a la Paulo Friere, and failed at a number of other activities, including organizing a homeless community theatre to present skits related to obesity in "fatsuits". More recent actions involved hiring migrant day workers to attend social functions in a wealthy Connecticut suburb, renaming a dog "love", combating pesticide use through a dandelion promotion campaign including dandelion recipe-books and replanting workshops, and building instruments from found materials for "gouching junkies," as our reformed-junkie collaborator put it.
It has been a grating, disrupting experience, but with occasional serendipitous successes. By applying international power-roles against the grain, places are exchanged, and communities are connected through their disconnects.
As such, the focus of the Ghana Think Tank is not the resolution of these problems, but on the gaps in translation that occur within the process as a way of uncovering hidden assumptions.
Next steps
Networked technology has played a large role in this project, but we have been unable to take full advantage of the personal conversations, discussions, successes and failures captured so far. In Liverpool, a video booth allowed passersby to record 12-second videos of themselves posing problems, which were uploaded to servers for the think tanks perusal. Groups in Serbia, Mexico, El Salvador, and Ghana have recorded their discussions and arguments, and action groups in the UK and US have filmed the enactment of these solutions.
How we will utilize the financial support
We will use the requested funds to edit this footage into concise videos for upload to the internet, and to create a website enabling this distributed collaboration between industrialized and "developing" countries. The site will serve as a place where viewers can see people posing problems, crafting responses, and struggling with these solutions, as well as a tool for the different think tanks and action groups to collaborate.
Budget: $4700
- $1500: Artists fees ($500 x 3)
- $1000: Think tank fees ($200 x 5)
- $1000 : Video Editing
- $1000 : Website Programming
- $200: Website hosting
Resumes
John Ewing is a digital media artist who creates activist public art with an emphasis on community
participation. He worked for two years in El Salvador, using the arts to organize and inspire
dialogue about human rights. Other work includes projects in Nicaragua and Uruguay, as well as
various cities in the U.S. His strong background in community organizing, in addition to visual
arts, enhances his ability to facilitate a wide spectrum of participation. View John Ewing Resume.
Christopher Robbins grew up in New York City, and has since lived and worked in London, Tokyo, West Africa,
Fiji, and Serbia. He built his own hut out of mud and sticks and lived in it while serving as a Peace Corps
Volunteer in Benin, West Africa, spoke at a United Nations conference about his cross-cultural digital arts and
education work in the South Pacific, and has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Fiji and Africa. He has won
fellowships, awards and residencies from MacDowell Colony, Anderson Ranch, New York Foundation of the Arts,
the Rhode Island School of Design, among others, and currently splits his time between Queens and Serbia. He's been working on the Internet since Gopher (though he didn't realize it till AOL). View Christopher Robbins resume.
Work Samples
Artist: John Ewing and Christopher Robbins
From March - May 2009, the Ghana Think Tank operated at FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, in Liverpool, UK. A retrofitted video booth allowed passersby to submit 12-second videos of their Liverpool problems to think tanks in Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Serbia, and Ethiopia. These videos were uploaded to a server for the think tanks perusal, and their solutions were acted on back in Liverpool
Solutions ranged from tough (building cement bollards to stop parking on sidewalks), to humiliating (installing a kitty-litter box for dogs in a public park) to fun (painting the undersides of umbrellas with sunshine and then doing sunny-day things in the rain) to unfamiliar (teaching drug addicts to build African instruments out of found materials, so they can play them to earn money while gouching "... instead a robbing.")
We were there as part of a group show on UNsustainability (Climate for Change) including Stefan Szczelkun, N55, Eyebeam, Melanie Gilligan and AIDS-3D, curated by Heather Corcoran.
>
Artist: John Ewing, Christopher Robbins, and Matey Odonkor
As part of the Optimism show - curated by Michael Connor at the Westport Art Center - Christopher Robbins, John Ewing and Matey Odonkor installed the second iteration of the Ghana Think Tank. This time, problems submitted by Westport citizens through anonymous dropbox and "man-on-the-street" interviews were sent to think tanks formed in Ghana, Mexico, El Salvador and Serbia. The solutions provided by these think tanks, including hiring Immigrants to attend Westport events in order to improve diversity, renaming a dog "love" to get him to stop barking, a dandelion promotion campaign, and whatever else arose, were enacted in Westport throughout the duration of the show.
Ghana Think Tank, Providence (2006)
The first Ghana Think Tank brought problems from Providence, Rhode Island to think tanks in Ghana, Cuba and El Salvador.
Artist : John Ewing and Liz Canner
Description : Eight residents of Boston, from a homeless person to a multi-millionaire to city councilperson Chuck Turner, were outfitted with tiny video cameras on their heads, to record life from their perspective. This public cyber-documentary then projected their entire contrasting days onto Boston City Hall and streamed them in real time over the internet.
Artist : John Ewing
Description : A street corner in Dudley Square and a street corner in Coolidge Corner were swapped via five-foot LCD screens streaming life-size video. The project enabled real-time interaction between two neighborhoods that are geographically close but economically disparate and provided pedestrians of each neighborhood with a portal into the other’s world. www.virtualcorners.net
Date : June, 2008
Medium : Video cameras, microphones, video screens, Stash’s Grille storefront, Brookline Booksmith storefront, live video and audio streaming technology, and people from Roxbury and Brookline, Massachusetts.