The Heidelberg Project

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When I saw the words, “Rhetoric in Culture,” I immediately thought of the Heidelberg Project in Detroit (the culture I know best).  You can read about the project on its website (website, that is), but here’s my description/interpretation:

In 1986, an artist named Tyree Guyton returned to the (now) dilapidated neighborhood where he grew up and transformed the abandoned houses and yards into canvasses.  He collected neglected objects from the streets and from dumpsters—shoes, stuffed animals, articles of clothing—and fastened them onto the houses before painting over them in bright colors.  Each art piece conveys some kind of argument, though some are clearer than others.  I first visited the project when I was twelve and the piece I remember most was a yard packed with lost shoes.  I, and perhaps the person who brought me there, interpreted the shoes as representing all of the people who had left the city since its decline (there is no way I would have made that connection when I was twelve).  Detroit lost over a million people since the late 1960s.  The reasons are complicated, but racial tension played a major role, along with car-industry dominance and, I’m afraid, terrible city planning in general.  If you want to know more about it, watch The Wire and every time someone says “Baltimore” think “but worse.”

Guyton didn’t pay for the property he painted, which, by that time, belonged to the City of Detroit.  The city got mad and tore down a portion of the art.  I believe the lost shoes exhibit was one of these pieces; I haven’t seen it in my latest visits.  This house, “The Dotty Wotty” is where his grandfather lived and one of the most famous.

(The picture comes from a cool article in an Indian Tourist Magazine called Frontline. Frontline, I mean. I know the blue is hard to read.) 

[Oh, and the project's official website FAQ mentions two “demolitions”—one in 1991 and another in 1999.]

 This is where it gets kind of fun.  Guyton then took his revenge on the city by painting polka dots on random facades of abandoned buildings across Detroit.  I grew up (and my parents still live) in a house within the city limits, twenty minutes from the project by car, and there is a polka dot on the what was once the Chinese take-out place down the street. I can’t remember dot's color. I want to say blue. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of this so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  Most of the art on Heidelberg Street is still up though, and the project remains as one of Detroit’s prime tourist attractions. 

If you’ve got four minutes or so, this video serves as a nice piece of rhetoric promoting the project. Also, you can see more examples of Guyton's art.

In the video, one of the narrators describes the project in terms of the questions it asks:  What is a community? What is a neighborhood?  Guyton says he wants to be part of the city’s great comeback and that is the endeavor’s prime purpose.  I’d argue that  Guyton, especially in the context of the polka dots on other parts of the city, also challenges the city’s neglect of certain neighborhoods by imposing his art onto what does not “legally” belong to him.   He’s saying, “We do it for the kids,” but may be thinking, “We do it because we can.”  Which is great. I mean, this is what I love about the project and one of the things I love about Detroit.   This project, along with a lot of other good and bad that goes on in my hometown, is an example of what can happen when nobody’s paying much attention.