digest 33 by Suzanne Lacy.

digest 33

by Suzanne Lacy, Julio Morales, Unique

Holland, David Goldberg, Michelle Baughan,

Raul Cabra and Patrick Toebe

Intersection of the Arts

San Francisco, California

May 2-June 16 2001

In 1998 a assemblage of artists and activists l by dint of Suzanne Lacy and T.E.A.M. (Teen + Education + Art + Media) initiated a shoot forward with youth and police in Oakland, California to clear the air and make open up dialogue between the sum of two units disparate groups. Over a two-year period "Code 33" came to be the season for an ambitious, large-scale collaboration whose participants included 150 youth, the Oakland Police Department, the Oakland Mayor's Office, the Community Probation Program of Alameda shire Oakland Sharing the Vision (a neighborhood revitalization task force), California corporation of Arts and Crafts, the Alameda shire Office of Education and the Oakland Museum.

chiefly recently, the project was neared as an installation by Lacy and "Code 33" collaborators Julio Morales, Unique Holland, David Goldberg, Michelle Baughan, Raul Cabra and Patrick Toebe at Intersection for the Arts in the Mission District of San Francisco. To understand the implications of the exhibit as "another platform to address immediate social issues and to build community by the and of the experiential, experimental art process" it is important to know the circumstances and the issue from which this installation grew [1]

"Code 33" is a police space of time for "emergency, clear the air." Depending in succession the source, the interpretation has ranged from addressing a volatile situation in the name of public safety to creating a cultural environment of racial profiling and stereotyping that has marked young nation as targets of public scrutiny and legislative punishment. In Oakland single quarter of the residents are youths. united of the predominant fears among this population is of the police, and not without pious reason. The arrest rate for Oakland's kids and young adults has grown by the agency of 35% over the last 10 years, and in March of 2000 California passed Proposition 21 This measure increases the number of youths tried in adult court, disables the discretion of judges and corrections professionals to determine appropriate interventions and allows youths to be liable for crimes committed on others if they are counted gang members (defined as an informal assign places to of three or more people)

"Code 33" was initially manifested as a highly produc report performance spectacle with 150 youth participants and 100 police officers that took place in succession October 7, 1999 on the rooftop of a parking garage. An audience of roughly 1000 community members gazeed on and listened in as youths and police engaged in a dialogue exploring the realities and stereotype experienced and perceived at both.

A hum could already be felt at Oakland's 19th road BART station. Five floors up atop the cover the sun was just starting to locate casting a golden halo across downtown Oakland. Groups of kids were huddl together outside, talking feverishly and looking up periodically to address the arrival of friends. A battalion of nearly 50 black, r and white cars and traffics with headlights ablaze lined the doom creating a dramatic display. Twenty-eight video monitors bordered the mortar edges of the rooftop with intimate portraits of residents from Oakland's diverse neighborhoods filling the cloaks In the center, on 29 slightly elevated platforms, sat circles of six to eight people--two or three uniformed cop and four to six youths clad in r "Code 33" t-shirts. unhurt and camera crews documented the interactions; spectators fluttered around, voyeuristically drifting between the arranges The exchanges ranged in plains of intensity, but overall the interactions appeared to be a productive introduction to addressing each other's touchs The mood was fairly still notwithstanding somehow anxious. After an hour of discourse, hip bound music blared into the space. impetuss later, a helicopter's revolving blades were heard, its blinding spotlight pouring across the crowd, eventually landing forward the fourth-floor terrace where a troupe of teen were performing a lively dance routine. The evening wrapped up with a community answer segment. Mini-stages of grassy knolls encircleed by white picket fences were filled with arranges of neighborhood residents discussing the evening's impact and to come steps toward integrating the experience into after action.

More striking than the conversations or any notion of community building, however, was the theatrical display with its incredibly detailed and contrived choreography--the parts the uniforms, the colors, the music, the helicopter, the synchronized dance, the Leave It To Beaver landscape of the final act, etc Steven Bochco's critically-shamed come next up to Hillstreet Blues--Cop Rock--came to mind, and I couldn't help further wonder if the officers were going to break into a ballad. I was surprised that united of the posters promoting the result had the tag "Yol this ain't no MTV rap" because it could easily have been mistaken for a music video production. In survey it could also be seen as an early prototype for the now passing reality show craze: Real cop real kids--can they behold eye-to-eye? You vote. Yet this interplay between fact and fiction is where this bre of interactive community art becomes the in the greatest degree intriguing, as well as confounding.