Last Friday, I went to Face Up: Durham Get Together. I was a little disappointed. I should post carefully, because I've met a lot of good people through Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the project was all really just about Brett Cook.

Cook had a residency and visiting professorship at CDS this spring. According to the CDS website, his role was to lead "the creation of large murals that will expand awareness of historic and contemporary persons and places in Southwest Central Durham." The murals are of important figures in Durham's history, like Pauli Murray and Kevin McDonald, founder of TROSA.

To make some of the pieces at the event Friday, Cook drew on a transparency and then projected his images onto large pieces of paper that were colored by community members. Not quite sure what the process was for the actual on-building murals, but I got the impression that the process was similar.

I guess what was a little disheartening about the process was that the murals weren't actually made collaboratively, they were just kind of colored collaboratively. And did the Durham community select murals as their favored medium? In a short video about the project, Cook explained that the subjects of the murals were selected by members of the community...but does all that come together to constitute a truly collaborative community art project? I just couldn't shake the feeling that it was more of a celebration of Cook's residency than of Durham itself. (Also, I can't help but note that I really didn't like Cook's style, and didn't really find it conducive to the process...too busy and squiggly. )

How much community input is enough to really give a community ownership of art projects like this? I'm certain a lot of good energy was put into this project, and I'm equally certain it resulted in some great community connections. However, I think the idea could have been taken a couple steps further. It was good for what it was, but I'm interested in completely subverting the role of the singular, authorial "artist" in such community projects. If a community can't walk away from a project like this without feeling that the art is their own, is it worth it?

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photo courtesy of feeb

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