RFK in EKY, The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project , is a series of public conversations and activities centered around the real-time, site-specific intermedia performance that recreated, on September 9th and 10th 2004, Robert Kennedy’s two-day, 200 mile “poverty tour” of southeastern Kentucky in 1968.
An Appalshop project directed by John Malpede.
Recreating Imbalance
A short description by John Malpede that describes the conceptual links between Agents & Assets and RFKinEKY.
'Findings from a Collaborative Inquiry by the Los Angeles Poverty
Department and the Urban Institute': MAKING THE
CASE FOR SKID ROW CULTURE
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LAPD Funding provided by
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COLD WAR
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COLD WAR a performance project, developed over 3 years by the PeerGrouP and
Los Angeles Poverty Department
The
finished piece will be presented as part of the Noorderzon Festival in
Groningen, the Netherlands, from16-26 August 2012. The City of Los Angeles
Department of Cultural Affairs, Cultural Exchange International
initiative has supported two phases of this collaboration between LAPD and the
Netherlands-based PeerGrouP . Both groups create theater work that engages with
current social issues, but the communities they work with are very different:
PeerGrouP builds projects in rural locations in Drente and L.A. Poverty
Department builds projects in the heart of Skid Row, downtown LA.
Excerpt
form an interview with women from Paula Panke, a women’s center in East
Berlin.
"I lived in a very small village.
My grandfather went to war and came back a changed man: he never wanted to talk
about it. We never talked about politics. We were very poor, no running water
or toilet in the house, but we had a garden and we had enough to eat. We were
happy. After the Wall fell our teachers started teaching us about the rest of
the world. From one day to the next the socialist system was not the only
possible, right system anymore. I could not understand it. I could not believe
in my teacher anymore. It was as if we all had migrated to another country,
only, we had not moved at all."
We
started the research in October 2010, when two members of the PeerGrouP, Floris
van Delft and Valentijn Fit, came to work with LAPD and to do research for the
Cold War performance project here in Los Angeles.
This year 3 LAPD-ers went to the
Netherlands where we exchanged our research, distilled from piles of books and
internet-sites, with 3 PeerGrouP-ers and together we started to develop
performance material. The last 10 days of our stay were spent in Berlin,
Germany. We walked the line of the Wall, visited many museums, spoke
with East- and West Berliners and invited them over for dinner, which we cooked
in our apartment in Pankow, were we also had our studio. We created a wall
length timeline (from 1945 till 2011) that linked our personal experience to
world historical events and invited our guests to add to it. We improvised with
this material and created texts based on existing texts and our personal
writings.
We walked down to the
Brandenburger Tor (Brandenberg Gate) with 7000 people during Occupy Berlin and
had many conversations that gave us insights in the effects of the Cold War on
every day life, right now, in Berlin and our own lives in the Netherlands and
America.
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 October 6-31, 2010 Floris van Delft and Valentijn Fit, members of the PeerGrouP, came to work with LAPD and to do research
for the Cold War performance project that LAPD is developing with the PeerGrouP.
Skid Row and the Cold War by Floris van Delft
I arrive at LAX with a ‘mission’. Actually, I have two ‘missions’.
Number one. I’m in Los Angeles to get to know LAPD, to meet the people,
learn about their way of working. Number two. I’m in Los Angeles to
research the Cold War. Two completely different goals with one thing in
common: with both of them I don’t have a very clear idea about what I
will find or where to start exactly. I’ll just start and, depending on
what I will find, decide on the next step.
My research on the Cold War leads me to a string of completely
different places. From a professor in political science at UCLA, to the
left wing Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.
From the Reagan Library to the Titan Missile Museum in Tucson. From the
Wende Museum in Culver City to veterans on Skid Row. The Cold War as a
topic for research is quite a big one. So I try to focus on different
events every time. The Berlin airlift, the Cuban missile crisis, the
development of nuclear weapons and the meetings between Gorbachev and
Reagan.
Trying to see ‘the big picture’ by zooming in. After taking a lot of
pictures, meeting with a lot of people and filling a lot of pages with
facts and stories there seem to be even more questions about what
exactly the impact has been of this period on the world. Because,
fortunately, the Cold War never became a ‘hot’ war, it seems almost easy
to forget it took place. All that ends well…
And while driving miles and miles to visit all these different Cold
War places, there’s one point I keep coming back to: Skid Row. LAPD’s
rehearsal schedule gives a nice rhythm to the week. Tuesday and Thursday
evening and Saturday afternoon I know where I’m going: to the rehearsal
space at UCCEP on Skid Row.
Skid Row works like a mirror. While getting to know the people and
the neighborhood, you have to deal with all the stereotypes you have in
your head. The first evening I came to Skid Row, I saw streets full of
potentially violent and definitely crazy people. But then I met the LAPD
group, which consists of… the same people I just saw walking around.
And during the weeks I worked with them, heard their stories and found
out how all these ‘crazy’ people are part of a community. All my
stereotypical thoughts about ‘these’ type of people were put to the test
and failed.
And four weeks later when I was line dancing with eighty Skid Row
inhabitants at the weekly karaoke night, I realized how simple it is to
connect to people. It’s like the way I did my research. You start with
saying ‘How are you?’, see what comes and then take it from there.
Skid Row gives purpose to the work of LAPD. With so much going on, so
much to fight for or against, there’s no question why the stories they
tell should be told. Prison overcrowding, aggressive policing, real
estate fraud, political mistakes. It automatically raises the question
of purpose in what I do. With Skid Row LAPD also works as a mirror for
me as a theatre maker. It’s not that I feel I should do the same kind of
work: it’s the question why I do what I do.A question I have asked
myself many times before but that has been renewed seeing LAPD working
with the community, stories and problems of Skid Row. A question that I
took home with me on October 30th and will keep trying to answer.
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