619404

research-article2015
VCU0010.1177/1470412915619404journal of visual culture<bold>Gach</bold> Love Is a Souvenir

journal of visual culture

Love Is a Souvenir: A Case Study

Aaron Gach

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten,

never let it disappear. ( John Lennon)

In 2011, the Center for Tactical Magic began discussions with a loose group
of artists, designers, journalists, activists, lawyers, and civil rights groups
about how to effectively address the New York Police Department’s (NYPD)
controversial racial profiling tactics, often referred to as ‘Stop and Frisk’.1 A
year later, the Center teamed up with the Street Vendor Project of the Urban
Justice Center, along with the non-profit arts venue Flux Factory, to launch
Love Is a Souvenir, a collaborative initiative involving dozens of New York
City souvenir vendors in Lower Manhattan. Presented here is not merely
a glamorized summary of the Center’s public intervention into the social
and cultural topography surrounding Stop and Frisk but rather an account
of its objectives, processes, outcomes, and shortcomings. In short, this is a
case study of the successes and failures of an engaged, critical, and creative
initiative.

Part 1: The Questions

When we started this Center for Tactical Magic project, we were interested
in how the racial profiling policies of the NYPD were being framed entirely
within a localized juridical discussion, whose participants consisted mostly
of activists, lawyers, and low-income communities of color. At the same
time, similar policy trends were being explored in other major US cities,
including San Francisco and Oakland. Three crucial questions propelled our
initial process:

(1) Rather than simply creating an aesthetic, representational response,

how can we critically engage this issue in a manner that can produce
actual effects?

journal of visual culture [http://vcu.sagepub.com]

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Vol 15(1): 55­–63 DOI 10.1177/1470412915619404
56 journal of visual culture Vol 15(1)

(2) Can discursive art practices be better situated to enhance or expand the
discussion around social issues in a manner that works in tandem with
other organizing efforts on multiple fronts?
(3) How can seemingly unrelated social forces be leveraged against policy-
makers in an attempt to achieve social justice?

Part 2: The Sphere of Influence

We then mapped out a performative matrix2 of the key players, along with
other social, political, and economic vectors that could influence New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office. We surmised that the discussion could
be expanded beyond the parameters of New York City legal structures if
we could shift the conversation into corresponding realms of public image,
tourism, and cultural economies of representation.

Part 3: The Community Partners

In looking at the tourist trade, we began to think of street vendors as New
York’s frontline cultural ambassadors − those who would frequently interact
with tourists. Souvenir vendors in particular work every day selling items
that promote New York’s public image as a place characterized by love,
liberty, and respect (e.g. ‘I Love NY’ shirts, Statue of Liberty hats, and a
bevy of NYPD-branded items). We approached the Urban Justice Center
and connected with Sean Basinski of its Street Vendor Project. He informed
us that most of the souvenir vendors in Battery Park and at the Statue
of Liberty ferry landing were African-American veterans, many of whom
had experienced harassment by the police. He agreed to work with us on
developing the project further and to help make introductions within the
street vendor community.

Part 4: Conceptual Development

The conceptual thrust of Love Is a Souvenir was three-fold:

(1) Although New Yorkers hurry past souvenir stands without batting an
eyelash, tourists will go from one to the next looking at their wares
and trying to get the best deal. We thought that a different or unusual
item, such as an idiosyncratic T-shirt, might catch people’s attention
and provoke an exchange. The shirts essentially could function both as
protest signs and as props to generate conversation between tourists and
vendors, many of whom were already directly impacted by aggressive
policing.
(2) Once in place, the project could also serve as a narrative prop for the
media to expand the conversation around Stop and Frisk beyond the
limited scope of debate. This would help address the enduring social/
cultural/political shift that was not being addressed.
 Gach Love Is a Souvenir 57

(3) Enough attention to the project potentially could leverage the tourist
audience and economy against the Mayor’s Office, suggesting that
aggressive policing has become so synonymous with New York’s public
image that it has become part of the tourist experience. If Stop and
Frisk could be re-scripted as a crisis in New York’s public image, it
could possibly activate widespread New Yorker pride against Mayor
Bloomberg’s policy decisions.

Part 5: Design Process

We produced six different T-shirt designs. Through email and social media,
we established a focus group consisting of community organizations,
activists, creative professionals, colleagues, and friends. The focus group
weighed in on the designs to help select the final version. The selected
design was a simple détournement of the iconic ‘I [heart] NY’ logo. We
imagined it as an interrogation of the ways in which public policy imprints
itself upon the social and cultural fabric of the city − both literally and
figuratively. The love is gone, and it has been replaced by a symbol for a
racist policy. New York’s public image is changing − and not for the better
− unless we put some heart back into it.
Although the other designs were perhaps aesthetically or conceptually
more interesting, the final design was seen as best suited to our purposes.
Additionally, the focus group helped to build awareness of the issue, as well
as the project.

Part 6: Into the Streets

Among the dozens of vendors we spoke with, across wide demographics,
only two did not want to participate. And, of those two, only one cited
support for the policy of Stop and Frisk as his reason. Nearly all said they had
been harassed by police or knew someone who had been. Some stories were
emotionally heavy, and the conversations were often lasting and intense. As
artists, we often struggle in these situations with the ethics of how or whether
to attempt to document these moments. That we were not more prepared to
archive this aspect of the project is perhaps the first major shortcoming.
Our imagined solution to this problem was to have journalists there to
take on the documentation role. On the first day out, no media outlets had
responded to our press release. On the second day, there was one: The New
York Times. The Times staff were a pleasure to hang out with, and we spent
the entire afternoon talking to street vendors and snapping shots as they
hung the T-shirts in their stalls. At the end of the day, the journalists said
they would do their best to tell the story, but they cautioned that the editor
would most likely present it as a personality profile and a public interest
story. Sure enough, that was largely the case. Although the issue was present
in the reporting, the spotlight was not where we had hoped it would be.
58 journal of visual culture Vol 15(1)

Part 7: The Exhibition

A project like this can easily exist outside the formal conventions of presenting
art. However, to exhibit this project is one way in which we expand the
conversation and directly support the assertion that such issues are not merely
of concern to lawyers and minority communities. On the one hand, the
documentation of such a project serves as a surrogate for experiencing the work
as it exists in another public context, and the gallery plays host to discussions
that might not occur without the display elements to provoke audiences. But
the exhibition does not merely serve to validate a work performed in a separate
context; rather, it expands the context in which the work is performed.
This is only possible if we consider the difference between work that is
engaged and work that is representational. Put another way, we might
borrow heavily from Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Author as Producer’ (1934), in
which he makes a parallel distinction between works with a ‘position’ and
those with an ‘attitude’. That is to say that while every work must inhabit a
particular space, a positioned or engaged work must be self-reflexive about
the conditions in which it is produced and experienced. The same holds true
not only for the work, but also for art institutions that exhibit such work.
If museums and other exhibition venues see their roles solely as preservers
of culture, one cannot expect that any work would move beyond telling
a story, representing a set of ideas, or having an attitude about a subject.
However, institutions that articulate a mission of cultural engagement must
necessarily conceive of the exhibition as a set of ideas that are activated and
put into motion beyond the walls of the exhibition space. As artists working
with such institutions, we felt it essential that we considered the exhibition in
an expanded context and attempted to meet the corresponding challenges.
As part of Public Trust, a group show at Flux Factory curated by Christina
Vassallo and Douglas Paulson, this project was situated among others that
sought to actively interrogate public institutions. The exhibition did not start
and end at the threshold of the gallery; rather, it used the gallery as a sort of
operational hub to define, enable, and deploy artistic strategies externally.
Thus, the exhibition was regarded as something that existed both within
and without the formal exhibition space.
Even for those who will never see the exhibition in any of its forms, giving
the project an additional frame outside activism resituates the audience’s
relation to the underlying issues. In that moment, art is less likely to be
limited to representational forms and is instead regarded as creativity
activated toward sculpting our shared social and political reality.

Part 8: In Conclusion
This work failed and succeeded on different levels. Although the various
community interactions throughout the project’s lifespan were rewarding
and effective, our media relations were lousy and our documentation not
much better. Although we didn’t expect this project to resolve the problem
of police misconduct and draconian public policies, we wanted to position
 Gach Love Is a Souvenir 59

this work in a manner that could actively lean on the levers and tangibly
affect the grinding of the machinery.
With honest reflection, we would have to admit that the project did not circulate
widely enough to achieve the impact we had hoped for. Yet if we regard this
as a template for future endeavors − both ours and those of others − we
can find value in an underlying framework of analysis that still seems sound
and connected. By recognizing that the production and exhibition of artworks
exist within a larger sphere of social, cultural, and political influences, we
can begin to develop creative strategies and tactics that deepen artistic (and
curatorial) involvement within a particular field of inquiry. The combination of
art, activism, and social engagement can benefit from a multifaceted approach
to the research, development, execution, and exhibition of a project. This
may often mean that each aspect − research, fieldwork, outreach, a media
campaign, performance, documentation, and so forth − gets treated as its
own work participating within overlapping spheres of influence. After all, the
political realities we are all faced with do not simply remain contained within
an isolated frame on a neutral wall, so why should we?

Figure 1 Alternative t-shirt design #1: Mayor

Bloomberg reprises David Copperfield’s landmark
illusion, ‘Vanishing Liberty’.
60 journal of visual culture Vol 15(1)

Figure 2 Alternative t-shirt design #2: Can we escape

from the dystopian future world of Escape from New
York?
 Gach Love Is a Souvenir 61

Figure 3 Love is a Souvenir. © Center for Tactical

Magic. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 4 Kendall. © Center for Tactical Magic.

Reproduced with permission.
62 journal of visual culture Vol 15(1)

Figure 5 LaSalle. © Center for Tactical Magic.

Reproduced with permission.

Notes
1. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), in 2011, New
Yorkers were stopped by the police 685,724 times: 88% were totally innocent;
53% were black; 34% were Latino; 9% were white; and 51% were aged 14−24
(see http://www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-frisk-data).
2. The term ‘performative matrix’ refers to the roles performed by all those
involved within a particular sphere of activity; or, ‘the aggregate of interactions
within social space – the dramaturgical activities of everyday life’, as defined
by Critical Art Ensemble (see McKenzie et al., 2000).

References
Benjamin W (1934) The Author as Producer. Address delivered at the Institute for
the Study of Fascism, 27 April, Paris. In: Jephcott E (trans.) Reflections. New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
 Gach Love Is a Souvenir 63

McKenzie J, Schneider R and the Critical Art Ensemble (2000) Critical Art Ensemble
Tactical Media Practitioners: An Interview. TDR 44(4): 136–150. Available at:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146868 (accessed 11 October 2015).
New York Civil Liberties Union (2015) Stop and frisk data. Available at: http://
www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-frisk-data (accessed 11 October 2015).

Aaron Gach is a convergent media artist whose work consistently addresses public
space, social politics and community dynamics. Inspired by studies with a private
investigator, a magician, and a ninja, he established the Center for Tactical Magic
in 2000. This collaborative authoring framework is dedicated to the coalescence
of art, magic, and creative tactics for encouraging positive social change, and is
largely the result of creative partnerships with a wide array of individuals from
many different backgrounds. In addition to producing national and international
projects for museums, communities, and major cities, Aaron Gach has taught courses
in Community Art, Street Media, Art & Magic, Collaborative Practices, and 4D Art at
the University of California – Santa Cruz, Stanford University, the San Francisco Art
Institute, and currently at California College of the Arts.

Address: Community Arts Program, California College of the Arts, 5212 Broadway,
Oakland, CA 94618-1426, USA. [email: agach.ctm@gmail.com]