This series of prints was commissioned by the Kounkey Design Initiative (KDI) for an exhibition at the Van Alen Institute in Manhattan entitled “Productive Public Space: Exploring Hybridities in Informal Settlements” in Spring 2008. The project explores alternative models for poverty alleviation, quality of life improvement, and environmental remediation through design interventions in the realm of landscape urbanism. Two poster series by Leah Murphy and Mindy Watts, along with work created by three other designers, were the culmination of several roundtable discussions addressing sustainable community driven design and defining “productive public space.” KDI plans to mass-reproduce the posters and distribute them throughout Nairobi, New York and other major cities as part of an awareness campaign.
Leah: "I find some of the general discussion surrounding 'underutilized space' overly focused on the tragic condition of the space itself, as if space intrinsically requires salvation. The figure in 'What Have You Done for Me Lately?' poses this question to the 'marginal' slack space, an inversion of the more design-centric question of what we as designers can do to reinvigorate space. However, the alternate interpretation—that the question is being posed to the viewer—is welcome as a plea for greater compassion and generosity among people."
Leah: "While KDI's work typically involves a forms of landscape urbanism vastly different from landscapes of consumption, this narrative imagines a parallel scenario in which marginalized individuals or communities can repurpose waste materials in a productive manner. 'Product of My Environment' is a triptych narrative inverting the polar orientations of production/consumption and passive/assertive: a discarded t-shirt is salvaged from a pile of rubbish, imprinted with a stenciled message, and sold as a value-added commodity. In this context, the subject of the phrase 'product of my environment' is inverted from its typical usage—as a characterization of people as passive entities whose character and identity are largely formed by forces of the environment—to a characterization of people as productive and resourceful, capable of establishing a more reciprocal relationship with their environment. In the latter reinterpretation, the 'product' actually refers to human production and 'my environment' becomes a much more possessive term: 'this is a product of my environment' rather than 'i am a product of my environment.'
Leah: "In 'What Have You Done for Me Lately' and 'Product of My Environment,' guerrilla art tableaux are used to communicate a physical and direct relationship between individuals and their environments. Both speculative scenes exist outside the realities of intermediate authorities and societal/public space regulations that would otherwise constrain or deny such first-degree relationships.
Mindy: "Printmaking is an art form built upon process. Whether centuries old, as in woodcut, or rapidly evolving through experimentation and technological advances, the process requires a design or idea to be communicated, a matrix honed to host that design or idea, and ultimately, the production and reproduction of information. Though printmaking requires a physical commitment as well - sweat and rolled-sleeves, ink-covered hands and fatigued muscles, the true power of a print is in its replication. Likewise, I think, with Productive Public Space. My set of three prints considers Productive Public Space first as an idea or realization of an opportunity to be seized upon, next as an actual place that takes form in the world, and finally as a transferable model of design practice that affords change along numerous paths and at multiple scales. This first print is intended to remind people to look at - and truly see - the environment they inhabit daily, to shed blind tolerance of left-over spaces in exchange for a critical eye that recognizes latent potential and motivation to take action."
Mindy: "My third print responds to the notion that Productive Public Space can result from a simple project that thinks big. This print is about the ability of Productive Public Space to effect lasting change at the local scale in a community's social life, life circumstances, and environmental health, and at a larger regional, national, or even global scale through replicability or rippling."
