RR: What’s it like to work with Joanna? SR: A masterclass in how to be a person on the earth is how I feel about the privilege of being around and work- ing with Joanna Haigood. She creates art with a fierce bravery but without anger. How to separate those things is one of the magic tricks that she does so well. I have bene- fited from learning a tiny bit of that. RR: Do you have any sense of what her secret is? SR: Love, just love. An enormous bottomless pit of love. An enormous supply of love that governs what she does. She wrestles with subjects and realities that are often- times deeply disturbing and uncomfortable and she does so, without the bitterness that would be so understand- able and forgivable. She manages to find this way to pres- ent a subject without any hint of an attack, but also never avoiding hard truths. Without having a blameful attacking component to it really opens the door for healing. There are lots of people, particularly these days, in recent times, calling attention to wrongs and highlighting aspects of our history in our society that could be better, and that’s great, and they can be better and we should be looking at that. But Joanna does it in a way that makes a very, very large roof that even those who might feel alienated from the message can stand under. She holds space so that we can all come together to acknowledge and find a different way. RR: Obviously, The People’s Palace , the performance, is ephemeral. What trace do you want it to leave behind? SR: The same as always, to touch hearts and minds. The reason we do theater in the first place is to affect someone. I know that sounds like a platitude, but this time based thing we do exists for a moment and it exists in collaboration with an audience member. That transformation within the audience member is actually the object that I’m crafting. And in terms of Joanna’s always leading with love, I hope that we will leave with a feeling that is warm and good, even though not everything we saw is easy to see. That there’s hope in it. This is an important, timely message. And it’s an important place for it to be happening. I think there’s power in this. In City Hall, this big governmental organi- zation being the venue for this message to happen. This is right where the change needs to happen. This is like the bullseye. SEAN RILEY creates unique striking environments and apparatus for time based art. He is a founding member and co-director of Cirque Mechanics, the host of television series Worlds Toughest Fixes and Speed , and a long- time collaborator on the construction of the Long Now Foundation’s 10,000 year clock. Awards and nominations in design include: 6 Izzies, TBA awards, Bay Area Critics Circle, and an Isadora Duncan Sustained Achievement Award in scenic design. Riley studied Theater at UCSC and lives in British Columbia . visiblegravity.com
I must acknowledge that as a cisgender white man in today’s climate of identity politics, it’s very difficult to sep- arate the speaker from the message. Of course, I have invis- ible biases like anybody else that I can’t always perfectly see. But I have been really lucky to work with amazing artists. Joanna is really one of my north stars. I’ve learned a lot about how to talk about this subject and how to see things more clearly. And I’ve also learned how to have a voice and that it is okay for me to have a voice within the subject matter. As a cisgender white man, for me to talk about white supremacy is not only possible, but important. RR: Absolutely, yeah. SR: So now perhaps after that whole bit, you can see more clearly why I preface that by saying that this is an amazing piece of architecture, and it’s beautiful, and I love it. This is not, for Joanna, and certainly not for me, a criticism of the architecture as it sits. This is a contextual understanding of it, right? This is something that informs the way we’re moving forward. So the piece is not in any way designed to slam the things but rather further compli- cate it. This building is supposed to be for everyone. And I think it’s clear going through that building that not everyone is represented. So one of the things we really focused on — the elephant in the room — are these four rather large medallions in the ceiling. They have a relief carved within them representing the virtues liberty, learn- ing, strength and equality. They’ve compiled images of lots of different symbols like you’d have on the back of the dollar bill. All this different symbolism. But they’re clearly not representative of the full breadth of our society. RR: In other words, the moniker “the people’s palace” didn’t really mean all the people. SR: Yeah, in my words, I think this piece could be described as an intervention to add back and showcase the missing elements of society that have not had repre- sentation or a voice within this space. RR: What’s another example of an element you’re reimagining? SR: So the medallions — I forget exactly how Joanna put it, she said something like, ‘The strength medallion is a half naked man with a sword.’ Like a really muscular white guy sitting down with a big sword. This is the vision of strength that we are presented with. And I think the vision of strength that Joanna would like to present, that she lives through her life and presents in her art and that we would like to present here, is something more nuanced. It’s the strength of caring and trust and respect. This is the strength of a society. This is the strength of an interre- lated group of people inhabiting a piece of geography. The strength of that society lies in so much more than a sword.
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