A Chinatown Banquet
By Jeff Roberts
Digital multimedia is a new option for producers and artists distributing
information or entertainment (often both). As with most technologies,
it has been primarily used for commercial purposes or by artists with
individual concepts. But digital multimedia, being more widely available
than film and more manipulable than videotape, might also be used
to create a product by and for an entire community, capturing the
complexities of real world communities as opposed to the ideas of
an individual or several individuals. A Chinatown Banquet, a location-based
multimedia project based in Boston's Chinatown, is an attempt to create
an image of the most densely populated neighborhood in Boston.
It is difficult to describe exactly what A Chinatown Banquet is.
The project was created by an artist named Mike Blockstein and developed
in association with several Community Development Corporations, community
groups, and art associations. So it may be best described as a public
art project. In this respect, it involves the creation of video clips
which capture and describe issues relating to the community and the
urban environment of Chinatown in Boston. The clips cover eight different
topics, each one mirroring a "course" in a Chinese banquet,
and each will be displayed on an LCD screen at some location within
Chinatown. However, the process of creating these clips was not the
work of a single artist, but a community project mainly involving
high school students. These students spend an entire academic year
(2000-2001) following a "curriculum" learning art, video
production, urban design, urban history, community awareness and community
activism. So beyond being simply public art, it is an educational
experience.
A true understanding of oneself includes an understanding of one's
surroundings, and a true understanding of one's surroundings includes
knowing the history of the physical environment as well as the community
and how this history relates to the present and the future. Chinatown
itself is replete with interesting and important elements. There is,
foremost, the Chinese culture itself, and how immigration (not only
of Chinese) has played a part in the shaping of the neighborhood.
There is also a generational element to this, as immigrants begin
to have children and raise them within an American culture. There
is also the built environment and how it relates to the rest of the
city; both the Central Artery and the Mass Turnpike Extension, along
with several other major transportation links, run through this densely
populated neighborhood. There are also other urban design phenomena
such as the present building boom and social phenomena such as the
restaurant economy. All of these topics are explored in this multimedia
project in an attempt to create awareness of the neighborhood's past,
present and future within and without the Chinatown community.
This is actually a project which is of particular interest to me
as a student of urban planning. In my opinion, the marriage of multimedia
art and urban studies is a very happy one. I have always felt that
because the city itself is so dynamic, and involves so many different
images, so many different sounds, so many different people, so many
different relationships, the only true way to capture it is with real
moving video and audio. Rather, the only real way to experience it
is to be there; the best way to create a reproducible experience,
with our current technology, is through video. In addition, it is
one of the greatest shames when people take their environment, community
or culture for granted. Video is a medium which has the capability
of capturing the attention of a broader audience than non-fiction
writing or even photography, and therefore can be used as a means
to promote awareness of people's environment and community. In time,
I would imagine that video should become the medium of choice for
academics and professionals alike in the field of urban planning.
As for this website itself, while it is very nicely designed and
very informative, it is a real tease since it does not include the
projects themselves (which, presumably, are yet to be completed).
It would have been very interesting to me if the project's creators
had thought to include online journals of the production; surely the
students creating this project will be learning far more than its
eventual viewers, and, since the web provides such a great medium
for distributing this type of information, it might be possible for
the students to share some of their own experiences with the rest
of us.
Altogether, I feel that the use of digital media to capture a community,
including its ethnic identity, its history, its relationship to its
surroundings, its economy and its social patterns, has been a long
time coming. I am anxiously waiting to see the results.