“Project Neighborhood”
Documentation by Richard Schemmerer
This is a small peek into the life and changes in the Alberta Street District in Portland and is part of my greater project titled “The Human Condition Project” which attempts to highlight different aspects of the human psychosocial makeup through various artistic Medias of diverse nature.
Artist Statement
I am always collecting images, collecting memories, collecting bits and bytes to build a neighborhood in my mind out of fleeting impressions to reframe intuitive feelings into hyper reality; a reality that becomes part of our collective history.
What does it mean to be a neighbor in the 21st Century? Is it enough to feel connected in cyber space with all its hyperbolic entrapment's and stage like pretensions. Has the invention of the car separated us from our rightful place in Nature and will now the digital revolution eliminate our need for soul connection and neighborly engagement/contact.
We talk more on the phone to people in faraway places then to the couple living across the street; a street of dreams with its homes designed to be self sufficient but is being self sufficient enough to guaranty a reality where everyone prospers with each other.
Next time you wave at someone across the divide go and stop for a minute to actually engage long enough to learn to care anew; to care about society as a real entity not a hypothetical abstract in an artificial space and time paradigm.
As we live in our designed homes we become blind to the starkness around the corner and who lives there. Life is not a one man/woman exhibition but a group endeavor with the benefits and responsibility of an extended family also called “Neighborhood”.
Contact at
Launchitnow@aol.com
http://pdxart.blogspot.com
