The Artmaker as Active Agent: Six Portraits

By Susan Monagan

CHAPTER 6: BARNABY EVANS

Figure 6.1. “WaterFire.”

Background

one of the sources for me was camping in the desert with my family and we would sit around a very small campfire because there’s no wood in the desert …we would spend the whole day hiking around the desert and collect whatever garbage we can and we would make a campfire with little pieces of wood -- debris that people would leave all over the place. And I just remember the solidarity that would happen in the middle of this entirely empty plane in the desert of the family gathered around …, just talking about whatever, and you could just lapse into silence and look at the fire and listen to the wolves outside the circle of the fire.

Barnaby Evans is “an immensely articulate conceptual artist and photographer,”(Wallace, p. 16) who, particularly through the enormous success of his public artwork “WaterFire,” has been attributed with kindling the fire of community and economic vitality in what was, in the early 1990’s, the relative cultural desert of Providence, Rhode Island. WaterFire has been widely studied by urban planners, community developers, and others seeking to demonstrate the exchange value of public art projects.

In the eighteen years since the piece’s first “lighting,” WaterFire has grown from a temporary sculptural work to a Rhode Island institution, economically depended upon to attract thousands of visitors to the downtown area to eat, drink, shop and stay overnight. Evans’ status within the community has risen accordingly, and he’s been duly awarded, as he continues to build the organization that maintains the integrity of the WaterFire experience and its integration into the life of the city.          

Most of Evans’ life is filled with the daily requirements of running, funding and answering invitations to comment upon WaterFire. He has taken time away from these obligations over the past few years, however, to create distinct, but also ambitious, conceptual artwork. In 2000, the city of Boston invited Evans, along with eight other artists, to create work that would celebrate the contribution of Frederick Law Olmsted to the parks, public spaces, and public life of the city. Olmsted’s collection of parks in the city is referred to as “The Emerald Necklace,” and Evans designed a piece that would draw attention to Olmsted’s genius for tackling and, generally, solving difficult engineering problems.

Mr. Evans's project, Moving Water, refers to a hydro-engineering problem Olmsted faced in his first Boston commission in 1875 that is still unresolved. (Lloyd, p. 33).

For Moving Water, Barnaby Evans orchestrated a convoy of stainless steel trucks on three consecutive Saturdays that moved 147,000 gallons of water from the Charles River to the now stagnant Muddy River, symbolizing the larger river's essential role in the past of sanitizing the Emerald Necklace's waterways. (The Institute of Contemporary Art, 2005, para. 3)

Yes, Olmsted made aesthetically beautiful parks that facilitated the important and subtle exchanges of social and civic life, but he also flexed the big, technical muscles of public works. Evans, too, speaks multiple languages in, and therefore invites multiple interpretations to, his work. And just what is Evans’ “work”? Though Moving Water is, at essence, a temporary, conceptual artwork, it has been realized; Evans arranged for the water, trucks, manpower and permits to be procured to move the convoy. One gets a sense in speaking to, and reading about Evans, that this technical and instrumental characteristic of his work is nearly as challenging and invigorating to him as the consideration of its more formal and symbolic characteristics. Like Trakas, Evans wants his work made and wants to partake in the making. In his essay, “Common Work,” Jeff Kelley writes:

Work has been seen as a penitential ethic by which American art is stripped of aristocratic pretensions and made common, especially if that work is tied to the land. (Kelley, 1995, p. 146)

The Saturday evening I interviewed Evans, he spoke eloquently about the meaning of, and symbolism associated with, WaterFire. Once the tape recorder was shut off and the formal interview over, we went walking along WaterPlace Park in Providence, the route along which WaterFire had been held the night before. It was here that I got a sense of how Evans embodies the objectives of WaterFire as an art piece about public participation. Evans is deeply, physically committed to the stewardship of this public place: picking up garbage, directing lost tourists, checking supplies in locked supply closets, discussing problems and issues with a gondolier, even lowering a flag to half mast. Evans also showed me the boats that he was in the process of building with an all volunteer crew.

Importantly, Evans works physically to bring WaterFire about. This physical work is public evidence of his ongoing commitment to the piece and his untiring belief in its importance and potential to effect positive change. Evans’ ethic and practice of “leadership by example” seems to have produced and galvanized the loyal cadre of hundreds of volunteers required to run each lighting of WaterFire.

The Work

The dates of WaterFire lightings are posted and distributed widely. A WaterFire lighting begins at sundown with a flotilla of four boats, filled with wood, parading up the river. Each boat bears a lit torch. The lead boat holds a person banging a gong. The boats are black as are the clothes of all the crew. The mood is somber. The banks on either side of this narrow river are thronged with people watching and walking. The lead boat lights a pyre in a brazier in the middle of the river: WaterFire has begun. The gonging stops, recorded music fills the sound space. The lead boat goes on to light pyres on 100 braziers spaced roughly twenty-five feet apart, lining the center of the river. For the next five or so hours, the sky will darken, the music will play and the boats will pass silently up and down the river, refilling the braziers with logs and otherwise tending the fires of WaterFire. This is the full extent of the simple power of the piece. A few gondoliers and small tour boats have obtained permission to bring passengers up and down the river during the lighting. Auxiliary music or theater performances or sale of food or trinkets are, by design, kept well away from the sensorial reach of WaterFire.

Waterfire is a multidimensional aesthetic spectacle, at once visual, aural, tactile, and olfactory; one sees it, hears it, feels it, and smells it. Its art-historical roots lie in the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art whose aesthetic operations are geared to different senses and whose scope can be physically unlimited. It is impossible to define exactly what the boundaries of Waterfire are; by altering the surrounding landscape with the glow of fire it extends its reach beyond its physical dimensions. (Wallace, p. 16).

Over 30 years ago, planners, developers, politicians and powerbrokers in Providence began to conceive of a plan to radically alter the downtown area. This plan, as it evolved over the next two decades, addressed four major components: “River-related infrastructure; highway, rail, road and pedestrian systems; parks and open space, and; management and economic development.” (Farbstein, p. 86) In the end, the plan cost $139 million of public money and involved 73 land swaps. Central to the planning process was the decision to relocate the rivers that flowed under the center of the city but had been largely paved over. The rivers were moved, two-thirds of a mile of river was uncovered, twelve pedestrian and vehicular bridges were built across the rivers, and an eleven-acre park was created along the rivers’ banks.

By the mid-1990’s, when a portion of the waterfront park had opened, it became clear to Evans and others that, “physically, the place was beautifully designed but it didn’t have the social engagement that an urban civic space needed to have.” Evans felt that the place, though successful aesthetically, was unsuccessful socially because it wasn’t being used. He wondered if there was a way to enliven and animate this public place through programming that would attract visitors and residents to the place and engage them within it, fostering individual and collective associations, memories and relationships around the place. He sought to pursue the symbolism of the phrase the city used to promote itself, “The Renaissance City.”

… I wondered whether you could really create a work of public art whose intention was to become a civic ritual for the city and to be both a ritual to create social engagement with a physical space but also whether it could also be symbolic of the renaissance of the city-that the city was hoping would happen-and whether you could combine those things. So a lot of the symbolic elements of the piece are derived from that secondary concern … there’s a, … fine art symbolism structure to the piece and then I have a personal, philosophical approach to how I feel art should relay its meaning. And then there’s also an urbanistic, … public policy aspect to the piece

I had designed it specifically to be as accessible as possible in its symbolism and it’s a public work of public art in about four senses. First of all, it’s in a public space. Second of all it’s using the artwork to activate a space – so engaging public and actively make them part of the space. But the public is an element of the performance itself. The people on the banks are a core part of the installation piece. So the public’s engagement with it is part of the entire experience and we do a lot of things to sort of change how the public’s behavior would be in the space. The music’s part of that and turning off all the streetlights is part of that – trying to make it dark and trying to eliminate all the vendors and commercial interruptions

In 2004, Waterfire was held twenty-four times, during a season that ran from the beginning of May through October. WaterFire runs each night until 1AM and Evans has studied, over the years, the change in demographic that happens over the course of the evening and has sought to enhance the experience of the users of the site at any given time. For example, Evans chooses more romantic music after 11PM to accommodate the lovers who tend to fill the space after that time. Like urban theorist William Whyte, Evans measures the success of the space created around WaterFire by the amount of “public displays of affection” exhibited there. In very broad terms then, the relationship between the creator and participants of WaterFire is interactive.

the fourth way the public’s engaged in the piece is symbolically, the people on the boats are volunteers from the public. So everyone who’s feeding the fires and even driving the boats … are members of the community .... And the symbolic representation of their participation is the log on the fire but the actual engagement is you see someone you recognize as the, “oh that’s the cashier at so and so” “isn’t that the carpenter we once hired?”

The volunteers who helped to launch the first few lightings of WaterFire tended to be Evans’ own friends and fellow artists. Over the years, Evans has noticed that the composition of the volunteers has changed to represent a much more diverse cross-section of the community. WaterFire has become a familiar, approachable, and yet meaningful community spectacle. According to the WaterFire website, the organization requires volunteers for the following tasks:

addressing mail, to crumpling newspaper, building fires, selling t-shirts, helping with fundraising, building boat! Before the event, assistance is required to store the wood in preparation for the event, build the more than 80 fires in the braziers on the river, place speakers along the river, prepare the program material, and other activities. (WaterFire, 2005, para. 3-4)

The Meaning

Evans is committed to using WaterFire to challenge what he perceives to be the deliberate opaqueness, unapproachability and inaccessibility of contemporary art, particularly as it is described along a market-critical axis.

I remember going into my own gallery in Manhattan where there was some punk kid behind a desk with the latest blue hair or whatever it’s supposed to be and he was trying his damnedest to make me feel uncomfortable entering the space. And I realized that although there’s this veneer of it all being about politically correct-egalitarianism and openness-it’s actually very much an extreme form of elitism. The way it’s funded, what it costs, what it refers to, the world view, what it’s talking about and the hypocrisy of that disturbed me ... And I wondered whether one could approach some of the taboo subjects such as beauty, such as avoiding 20th century irony, such as engaging the general public, in a work of art.

And I think a lot of artists get – particularly contemporary artists get – much too engaged in making something that is very idiosyncratic to their own personal like or their own personal culture and as a consequence it really limits the potential interactions the viewer can have with it. So I’m actually moving in the opposite direction of what a lot of contemporary art is doing which is just self-confessional or related to one’s ethnic heritage or something. I’m going back to very ancient symbols. And it’s often very self-referential and hermeneutic. But a lot of contemporary art is just very insular and it’s got a very particular meaning of the artist which they expect the viewer to tease out and I don’t think people are particularly good at teasing out the meanings in visual culture. So I think really what I’m trying to do is create something that’s got a sufficient self-consistency or internal consistency in its structure but it becomes sort of a resonant object or experience that people can then extract their own meanings from.

Evans’ analysis of WaterFire seems to be steeped in an unstated populism and a desire to make art that connects with Everyman and nearly every resident of the city. He is taking art beyond its consciously aesthetic function to put it in service to the society it’s drawn from: in WaterFire’s case, to address the instrumental needs of animating a public space. Like Trakas, Evans has his ear to the ground and wants to be sure his work resonates beyond the art world.

I think my favorite compliment about WaterFire came from this welder who was doing the structural steel for that big mall that’s in Providence. And he came along on some Tuesday or Wednesday after a fire and he said … “you know, this is going to sound strange but WaterFire it’s almost like it’s art or something.” Isn’t that great? “It’s almost like it’s art or something.” And … you know it meant to me that we’d taken the big scary capital “A” off of art.

In 1999, Evans created a sculptural installation of bamboo and stones for the Rhode Island School of Design’s museum entitled Rikyu’s Second Dream. The installation forms a kind of path, guiding the viewer through a portion of the museum and highlighting some of the museum’s Asian collection. In addition to these objects, Rikyu’s Second Dream reveals, “a wondrously mysterious object veiled in red, which represents, according to Evans, a ‘fetish of modern art’ of great but hidden importance,” (Neumann, 2000, para. 3).

It is this “hidden importance” that Evans appears to want to address and challenge in his work. Why has the meaning of contemporary art become mystified and whose interests does this obfuscation serve and where does that locate power within the art world? Rikyu’s Second Dream received the following notice:

Evans's desire to evoke an environment larger than the immediate physical surroundings of his projects informs his visionary pieces and moves them into a spiritual realm unshackled by predictable signs and symbols. Be they exhibitions mounted inside the museum, such as Rikyú's Second Dream, or monumental endeavors launched outdoors, namely Providence's WaterFire, Evans's artworks momentarily transform their mundane contexts into fluctuating sites of numinosity that operate simultaneously at the levels of intimate contemplation and epic mystery. (Branham, 2000, para. 1)

Though Evans is certainly capable of appreciating Branham’s dense critique of his work, one gets the feeling that he values the simple assessment of the welder more. In his article, “Common Work”, Jeff Kelley refers to a deep vein of contemporary art that shares Evans’ elevation of work through pieces which are, “All infused with a sense of the common, the literal, process and of the capacity of work to demystify art in the name of life,” (Kelley, 1995, p. 146).

Seeing one’s grocery store cashier holding a torch on a WaterFire boat is certainly part of that “sense of the common” and one’s own participation in the piece, by strolling the river’s banks, demystifies it. Even though WaterFire as a process is controlled, the power generated by the piece is shared, making it difficult to capture or own and placing it somewhere outside the art marketplace and critical eye. Like much public art, WaterFire is a hybrid animal, blending use and exchange value, but even more complexly, that exchange value is not based on the ownership of the piece itself but the activity generated around it.

As Evans says:

“It is a ritual and a ceremony that refers to scores of religious festivals, as well as contemporary art,” he says, “But I didn’t want all that symbolism to get in the way of enjoying it simply for the beauty of it.” (Hapgood, 2002, para. 11).

Interaction

Figure 6.2

In terms of “Interaction” Evans takes on the roles of both “Artist as Analyst” and “Artist as Activist”. Evans’ activism is supported by a thorough and ongoing analysis of the conditions of public life and the role of art generally, and his art specifically, within them. Evans wants to do more to effect levels of participation in our democratic systems.

Evans viewed the Providence River Relocation with a critical eye and was able to imagine and realize his role in making that project more successful. His analysis of the use of public space and WaterFire’s role in it is well-developed and articulated. But has WaterFire become too successful? Has it presented a symbolic sharing of power through a public display of participation while, in actuality the reins of power have never been held tighter by an elite few? Are the “powers that be” in Providence capturing the success of WaterFire and using it for their own ends?

socially prescribing isn’t it? as almost… What do the Romans call it? Bread and Circus. Engage the public and sort of take them off of the political oppression that’s happening. I don’t think that’s what this spectacle’s doing although we’ve heard that argument before. …people saying there’s a lot wrong in Providence. There’s poverty, there’s this, there’s corruption and that, in a sense, WaterFire’s the gloss that covers that up.

The primal nature and spectacle of Waterfire might elicit a set of fascistic associations; to the historically-minded it does bear a surface resemblance to the theatrical displays of torchlight that occurred in totalitarian regimes in the 1930s. But Evans insists that the deep-seated symbolic power of fire and water and the resonance of ritual should be divested of such retrograde political associations. Indeed, Waterfire operates in a decidedly anti-fascistic, discursive manner; while it makes use of elemental opposites, the way in which those opposites relate is infinitely variable and inconclusive. (Wallace, p. 16)

As a public figure, Evans wears multiple hats. He is the creator of a piece that requires constant maintenance to protect its integrity as an artwork. He is also the head of a non-profit organization that organizes the volunteers, operations, finances and fundraising that keep WaterFire afloat. He must also play an active civic role: weighing in on issues that effect the future reception of WaterFire and his broader interests in preserving public spaces and enhancing public participation throughout the city. The balancing of the requirements of each of these roles creates tension.

Evans wishes the Board of Directors of WaterFire was stronger and better at raising money. But how, for example, would Evans the non-profit executive director respond if this board asked him to make changes that alleviated financial pressures but compromised the artistic integrity of the piece? As WaterFire has grown as a phenomenon -- both as a work of art and as an organization – it has been required to interact with and respond to greater numbers of stakeholders with multiple demands. Each lighting, for example, is financially sponsored by a different corporation or organization. Every year the expectations for WaterFire’s success grow.

Evans’ activism is no less fervent but it has gone underground and been manifest in more of an “organizer” than an “activist” function. The day-to-day organizing decisions he makes are based on his moral and ethical objectives of preserving democratic participation. But with the success of WaterFire, Evans has become a “player” with access to relatively elevated circles of power within the city and state’s political, economic and cultural systems. Activists are typically defined as those operating outside the mainstream with limited access to traditional power venues.

Audience

Figure 6.3

As much as Evans seeks to enhance democratic participation in an abstract way, it appears that he runs WaterFire more like a benevolent dictator. There is never any doubt who is in charge of the WaterFire process; it is not a piece that is created or even maintained by committee. Evans occupies the center ring as the originator of the piece and is fully responsible for its success or failure. There is no “collaboration and codevelopment” in WaterFire. Everyone has a role in Waterfire, but the role is prescribed and the script is set. Participation in WaterFire is anonymous. When, in the past, volunteers have sought to change or impact the piece, Evans has rejected changes and reasserted his control over its design.

the artist's intention is to make the entire city a stage set with its citizens being part of the installation work (Project for Public Spaces, 1998, para. 13).

As previously mentioned in “The Meaning” section of this paper, audience is a central conceptual consideration of WaterFire. Three rings of Lacy’s “Audience” circle – “volunteers and performers,” “immediate audience,” and “audience of myth and memory” -- are addressed directly by Evans by design. Creating an “audience of myth and memory” one with myriad associations with the public space created by the Providence River Relocation, was a central goal of WaterFire. Since Evans builds the viewer into the piece, he recasts the “immediate audience” as the unplanned and unrehearsed “volunteers and performers” of his spectacle. He seeks to make their participation as pleasurable as possible.

the music envelopes you and you breathe it and you walk through it and a sense is almost that you are the star of a movie and this is the soundtrack so that you have become part of the piece so the music becomes just part of the atmosphere along with the smell of the smoke and the life and the engagement of the people. So there’s … [a] very really cool experience for the viewer rather than an egotistical performance for the performer with everyone as receptive audience and circle receiving this inspired wisdom.

WaterFire also takes advantage of a physical/social phenomenon that urban theorist William Whyte calls “triangulation”: a relationship in space between two people and a third activity where informal interaction can take place. In describing “triangulation” in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Whyte says:

By this I mean that process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other as though they were not. There are, say, two men standing at a street corner. A third man appears. He hoists a sign and begins a loud harangue on the single tax. This links the two men. Casually they exchange comments on the human comedy before them, in a tone of voice usually reserved for close friends. (Whyte, p. 94)

A focus of WaterFire is the development/deepening of the relationships of those looking at it: between audience members. The sensorial power of WaterFire is a conduit for participation, engagement, and understanding, as viewers move in and out of speech. The triangulation effect helps accomplish this.

somehow there’s enough engagement going on that the time that’s needed between the sentences in a real conversation don’t get awkward and so very real conversations can happen …There’s still something happening and it’s not directly responsive but it’s engaging enough that this sort of revery can occur and it’s really quite remarkable and I don’t think I fully realized how effective it would be

WaterFire appeals, attracts, and engages. Though there are rules of behavior at WaterFire, they rarely need to be enforced; people are generally there because they want to be and a great portion of WaterFire’s participants are repeat visitors. With Rikyu’s Second Dream, however, the audience’s enjoyment of the piece affected its integrity and Evans needed to intervene in order to restore it.

The path created by Rikyu’s Second Dream through the RISD art museum ended in a setting of concentric, wooden benches surrounding a pile of carefully stacked, smooth stones lit from above. The environment created by these elements and a pre-recorded soundtrack was attractive, balanced and soothing. Over time, this setting became a favorite place for the museum guards to take their breaks. Like Trakas, Evans measures the success of his work by whether it is used and so was pleased that the museum guards were using the piece but was disturbed by the noise from their shortwave radios. He felt that this aural element presented an obstacle to other museumgoers enjoyment of the space.

I had to complain because the viewers couldn’t go see the piece because all the guards were taking their breaks in the middle of the installation piece, which was alright but they had their radios so you’d hear (makes noises) so I had to say “look, I don’t mind that the guards of the museum like the piece, but they’ve got to turn their radios off when they’re on break.”

So how much is too much audience interaction? How come the guards taking their breaks in the space is a measure of the success of the piece but their radio noise intrusive? Is it because Evans planned for interaction in the visual environment but not the aural one?

Intention

How can we create public spaces that allow for random interactions and invite common stewardship not just for economic value but for social value as well? Evans uses WaterFire to address these questions and more generally whether art has a role in establishing and identifying place. In his essay, “Common Work,” Jeff Kelley quotes Patricia Phillips:

“Public art,” she writes, “is about the commons – the physical configuration and mental landscape of American public life.” A stage where “the predictable and unexpected theater of the public could be presented and interpreted,” the commons was also a social extension of “the dialectic between common purpose and individual free wills.” It was here that we became citizens. (Kelley, 1995, p. 147)

When I asked Evans if he saw civic participation as a public good, he answered:

Well, it certainly is a public good … that’s what de Tocqueville talked about America and I think that sort of level of civic engagement in this country is really quite unusual and important part of the social fabric and I think it’s fraying a little bit. And that’s part of what we’re trying to do with WaterFire.

I think people understand that symbolic thing of seeing each person putting a log on a fire which is symbolic of the sort of participation and community which is necessary for the community to work, where everyone does there own little part, what part of building community they can do. And this is a very simple act but it becomes ritualized, it becomes repetitive and it is seen by both those who do it in the boat as part of what they’re doing, but it’s also seen by people on shore as this simple act of creating a fire. So you’re always reconstructing that sense of the sort of rebirth of the city where the fires go down and then some new comes back and they make an effort to rebuild the fire log and suddenly it’s celebratory. So that constant ebb and flow and the participation of the public in keeping it going is reenacted in front of the viewers all the time.

Evans also sees art, and WaterFire specifically, as having a role, albeit a minor one, in challenging lifestyles that negatively impact physical and mental health. The same consumerism and cooptation of public space that discourage democratic participation, also create the isolation and estrangement that lead to impaired physical and mental health. WaterFire gets people walking.

"WaterFire gets Americans out of their cars and back into their public spaces," said Barnaby Evans. "By design, there is no point where you can see the whole installation at once, so you mingle with other citizens as you walk. It is designed so people can interact with each other, with the artwork, and with the urban environment." … (Project for Public Spaces, 1998, para. 9)

Effectiveness

Evans associates success with use. WaterFire has grown every year to involve more audience and add more lightings. But should “use” be measured broadly or deeply: many users or fewer users with deeper associations with the place and the piece? Do the crowds at lightings affect the ability of the viewer to interact intimately with the piece? Even if, as Evans insists, WaterFire has not changed over the years, the public’s reception of it has changed. Given the central role audience plays in this piece, this change is bound to effect the piece overall.

So how does Evans measure the success of WaterFire? Certainly, he has ample evidence that the piece animates the public waterfront space on the nights lightings are held. Whether that space is used at other times is less clear; the Saturday night we walked along the park, it was essentially deserted. WaterFire has contributed to the city’s “renaissance” campaign and has made the economic and political powers more receptive to the role art can play in development and the idea of a “creative economy”. WaterFire Board Member Joan Slafsky remarks:

The project has also acted as a catalyst, promoting arts groups to display and stage new work. "It has acted almost as an incubator for other public art projects," said Slafsky. (Project for Public Spaces, 1998, para. 9)

He has a few informal tools with which he gauges response to the piece. Evans points to the loyalty of volunteers, and the continued stream of people wanting to get involved as evidence of the piece’s relevance. At every lighting there is also a guest book sign-in and people can write down their reflections about their experience with WaterFire. Though anecdotal and possibly skewed toward the positive response, these stories give Evans a connection with the anonymous WaterFire participant and a justification of, and motivation for, his continued effort.

What is striking about Waterfire is that despite its poststructuralist underpinnings, it is accessible and wildly popular. Those who attend it (and who might not be aware of Evans's philosophical encodings of the event) improvise their own interpretations. Many endow it with personal associations. When asked about the meaning of Waterfire, some observers state that it is difficult to articulate, but that it is important nonetheless. Perhaps they construe Waterfire as significant in a civic as well as in an aesthetic sense; the opportunity to gather in a public space with no practical motive is to affirm a conviction in communal life. (Wallace, p. 16).

Figure 6.4. Barnaby Evans

Next: Chapter 7 - Jennifer Miller
Return to Table of Contents