Reuben Lorch-Miller
Project Proposal
2/15/2020
Jamaica Neighborhood Flags.
In my work as an arts educator, I have spent a good amount of time in the last two years traveling around Southeast, Queens. I have been working in public schools in District 29 that includes many neighborhoods around Jamaica. I get off the subway at Jamaica Center and take buses to the various schools. I have taken the bus up and down Jamaica Avenue many times. Sometimes, I’ll get off the bus early just to be able to walk down the avenue. I’ll sometimes walk between schools, exploring the neighborhoods. I’ll go into stores, stop for lunch or just check out the different houses and streets. One thing I have noticed is that there are a lot of different flags in along Jamaica Avenue. There are flags from all over the world; Bangladesh, El Salvador, Trinidad, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Guyana, Haiti, United States, etc., etc. I mostly see them flying over car dealerships and grocery stores. Sometimes they are hanging in shops or in the windows of apartments. All these visual representations of places that people are from or feel connected to are beautiful and fascinating. They are symbolic entry points to a wide range of seemingly separate and yet shared cultural and personal experiences. I am curious about the potential representation of the collective experience within the space of Jamaica, Queens. I have this curiosity while also recognizing that everyone has their own experience. I also acknowledge that concepts of collectivity or oneness can often be messy and incomplete. However, whether we face it or not, we are all connected. I wonder what might this connection look like? What forms could it take?
New York State, New York City and the Borough of Queens all have flags. Jamaica, Queens does not have it’s own flag. Its flag seems to be collection of many flags, an exquisite multitude of colors and forms, a bouquet of visual expression. If we could design a flag for Jamaica, Queens, what might it look like? How might we condense an identity and place that seems so uncontainable and non-singular into an image composed of shapes, image, text and color? How, as a community, from the inside out, can this image be formed, while still recognizing the inherent limitations of any symbol to be everything to everybody? The only thing I know for sure is that I am not the one to answer these questions. However, I can be the one to ask them.
I propose to facilitate a process to create a set of designs for flags for Jamaica, Queens. I will organize and facilitate this process in collaboration with two groups of community members. One will be with an elementary Social Studies or Art teacher and their students. I will work with a class of elementary kids to develop their proposals for a new flag. The other group will be community elders, organizing in a local senior center or assisted living facility. I will facilitate a workshop where this group creates proposals for a new flag. The goal of this phase is to come up with about 20 proposed designs. I will then have the school children judge the seniors’ designs and vice versa to narrow down the proposed designs to ten final flag designs, five from each group.
I will then take these ten final designs and recreate them into designs that can be commercially produced as actual full-scale flags. My process will not be to change the intent or design of the flags, but rather to refine or actualize the ideas in a way that standardizes them and makes them producible and readable as flags. My intent is to stay as close to their design and idea as possible. Hopefully, I will be able to use a local company for the production of the final flags.
Once produced, these ten flags will be flown/exhibited outside, along the pedestrian plaza of the 165th Street Mall. The details of where and how these will be flown can be worked out based on what is feasible and realistic. I would like them to be shown with some prominence and have some element of explanation or interpretive text made available to the public.
After a period of time they will be taken down and be made property of the community held in trust by the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. A possible further outcome might be to create a way for the public to vote on these final designs and select a single winning design to be proposed as the official flag of Jamaica, Queens.
In proposing this project, I take on the role of artist-as-facilitator. My part in this proposal braids my work as an artist and as an educator. It is within this integrated framework that I hope to provide an opportunity to collaborate with members of the community through a collective inquiry and realization of a concept. I also take on the role of a production manager. I have done a lot of visual production and exhibition preparation in my life, working as and with fabricators of all types. Sometimes this has been for myself and sometimes in the service of others. I know how to manage the timelines, demands and workflows of multiple forms of art production.