Regret and Rationalization

Date: Summer 2014

In the summer of 2014, my family and I travelled throughout Israel for three weeks. We had no set agenda. We had our backpacks, tents, and money. There was a lot of regret and rationalization going on - wishing we had stayed somewhere, but realizing we could not have due to reason x, y, or z. This was a constant loop playing in our head. So much so, we had to go back to one place at the very end of the trip to 'relive' some moments we wish we had lived on our first visit to that place. During this hyper-regret-rationalization-situation of travelling, it occurred to me that this goes on all the time. Not only in my wife's head when we are going through our typical days in our typical house with our typical activities, but in other peoples heads as well. As I started listening to people, and looking through the papers, and thinking about my conversations with public officials and staff, I began to hear a whole slew of regrets and rationalizations.

I began to realize the City - its governance, its occupation in the landscape, its people - is just one big ping-pong game of Regret and Rationalization. We kill a frog, we preserve some landscape, we fund a project. When it is over, we regret. Then we rationalize. Then we do it all over again. And again. And again. And again.

Contributors

Drawings and words by Worker, Inc

Voice by Erica Blank

Manufacturing, printing and assembly by Gloo Factory

Sound by Audio Geography

Video camera and editing by Eduardo Guerrero

Space by Exploded View Gallery, Tucson, Arizona

A Things To Do While Driving Production 

Centers and Street Corners

Date: Spring 2013

Location: Vacant building space, downtown Tucson, Arizona.

Organization: the Center

Collaborators: Scott Stiteler, Sonya Sotinsky, Michael Keith, Rand Carlson, Matthew Zech

Worker, Inc. presented the exhibit "Centers and Street Corners" at 5th and Congress. The exhibit looked at the physical and social components of centers and intersections.

In a highly participatory exhibit, attendees had the chance to: locate their centers in the world, Tucson, and downtown, help define what a center is, list favorite and memorable street corners, compare and contrast street corners through photography and interactive overlay maps.

Other components of the exhibit included I AM Tucson, Greyhound OR Students?, and Development Darts.

In the end, the exhibit will ask why the concepts are even relevant - why do we care about "centers?" Why are street corners so vital to the urban environment? What are the major components involved in creating successful and unsuccessful centers and street corners?

In fashion with the other Worker, Inc. exhibits, the audience, instead of the exhibitor, answered these questions.

Worker Transit Authority

Date: Spring 2012

Location: Vacant building space, downtown Tucson, Arizona.

Organization: Worker Transit Authority

Collaborators: Jeffrey Buesing, Ben Olmstead, Alex Von Bergen, Peter Wilke, Tyler Jorgenson, Siri Trumble, Michael Sullivan, Dwight Metzger, Ron and Patricia Schwabe, Megatrend Construction, Phil Lipman, Brian Andrews, Patti Van Leer, and the Apparatchiks (BJ Bartlett, Darcie Hazelbaker, Dale Rush, Jeffrey Buesing, Simon Donovan, Katie Rutterer, Kimi Eisele, Amy Von Harrington, Dana Decuzzi, Eric Sterner, Annie Kurtin, Madeline Gradillas, Robin Shambach, and Patrick Bradley) Support: The project is funded through the Tucson Pima Arts Council / Kresge Arts in Tucson II: P.L.A.C.E. Initiative Grants. In kind support from Reproductions Inc., Peach Properties, Organic Kitchen & Zocalo Magazine. Letters of support from City of Tucson Department of Transportation, City of Tucson Ward I and VI, Living Streets Alliance, Downtown Partnership, Drachman Institute, School of Geography and Development University of Arizona, School of Architecture University of Arizona, City of Tucson Office of Conservation & Sustainable Development.

What if private industry participated fully in our cities' transportation systems - not just naming stops after themselves, but actually ran a single line? What if the laws, customs, and norms that regulate traffic were connected directly to nature? What if the last thing on our mind when we got into our personal automobile, the bus, our bicycle, or walking shoes was efficiency; that we actually enjoyed moving through the city and took our time? Traffic, transit, moving through the city. It has always been an issue. We continually try to fix the problems that arise from these necessary components of our lives. We build more roads, we invent different forms of transportation. we create new zoning laws. We create a variety of economic incentives. Enter the worker transit authority (wta), a new form of authority that investigates and produces projects for the built environment through the convergence of planning and art.

The exhibit, the Worker Transit Authority, is a display of mock planning projects created by a mock planning authority. The Worker Transit Authority asks the community, "How do you move through the city?" And, for three weekends, Tucson residents participated in this important discussion about land use, infrastructure, transportation, environment and distribution.Like actual transit authority public processes, the project is a form of civic engagement, but unlike actual transit authority pubic processes the WTA events are fun! The project wraps art, parody, and beauty to format new and radical notions of how we can function as individuals and as a society. The projects include: an overview of the Worker Transit Authority (WTA), the Consumer Transit System (CTS), the Bicycle-centric Approach to Planning (BcAP), and Distribute This! (DT!). The exhibits include interactive maps, brochures, surveys, drawings, sculptures, videos and text.

Photography by Roy Chamberlin

Downtown Links to Replace Downtown Links!

Date: April 01, 2013

Location: Storefront Windows, 44 North Stone Avenue, Tucson AZ. ABORTED.

Organization: Tucson Environment and Ecology (TEE)

Collaborators:University of Arizona Downtown ABORTED.

April Fools jokes are always fun, especially if the joke giver and receiver both enjoy the prank. If, though, the receiving end of the joke is unhappy, they are no fun at all. Tucson has always been a place of sensitive people, and this case was no exception. In an effort to have a little fun with the 40-year-old project of running a high-volume roadway between 4th Avenue and Downtown Tucson, Worker Inc. proposed a redesign of the roadway into a golf course. You can read all about it in the April 2013 issue of Zocalo. After some consternation, himming and hawing, and from finally on-board collaboration to we-have-to-pull-the-plug-I-just-got-a-call-from-the-mayor from a partner, the project was pulled from being installed in the windows at 44 North Stone.

+/-92: Downtown Tucson Master Plans 1932-2009

Date: Fall 2011

Location: Vacant building, downtown Tucson, Arizona

Organization: The Steering Committee of the Planning Division of the City Resources and Studies Unit of the Bureau of Urban Economic and Design Office of the City of Tucson

Collaborators: Rachelle Diaz and Julie Ray of Pop-Up Spaces, Kimi Eisele of the Design Co*op

Support: John Wesley Miller Companies, Anne-Marie Russell, Peter Wilke, Epstein Construction, Reproductions, Peter Baer, Josh Schacter, Len Taruscio, Steven Meckler, Leigh Spigelman, Roy Chamberlin, Therese Perreault, Chod McClintock, Pima County Planning Department, City of Tucson Department of Transportation and PARKWISE, Alex Kimmelman, Poster Frost Mirto Associates, BWS Architects, Bob Vint, Rob Paulus Architects, University of Arizona College of Architecture, Tucson Pima Arts Council, Dave Taylor, J.T. Fey, Wheat Scharf Associates, Donovan Durband, Rebecca Ruopp, Marty McCune, Jerry Kyle, Chris Trumble, Sam Daughety, Katie Rutterer, Rachel Villareal, and Amanda

Worker, Inc., the Design Co*op (Kimi Eisele), and Pop-Up Spaces (Rachelle Diaz and Julie Ray) collaborated in the Fall of 2009 to create the exhibit +/-92: Downtown Tucson Master Plans 1932-2009. The successful exhibit displayed a compilation of over 100 Downtown Tucson master plans, comprehensive plans, studies, and projects. The exhibition included realized and unrealized plans authored from the early 20th century to 2009. An interactive timeline presented above the plans assisted viewers to track world events, economic and social trends, and Tucson's history in relationship to plan's origins, realization, or death. This was a rare opportunity to see ALL of the planning for downtown Tucson in one space at one time. Also included in the exhibition were photographs of successful spaces and places that make our downtown unique—some of which were a direct result of planning, some of which were not. Also, a crew of official performing "apparatchiks" were on site to collect public input for current and future downtown master planning, for which there were no funds, of course.

TOUR OF THE FUTURE

Date: Spring 2010

Location: Various building, downtown Tucson, Arizona

Organization: design co*op 

Collaborators: Kelle Brooks, Beth Weinstein, Kimi Eisele

Support: Amy Rude, City High School

The design co*op facilitated a project for a humanities class at City High in Tucson, Arizona. The students were to create an imagined future for an existing building in downtown. They were asked to write a paragraph about that future and create a drawing representing that future. Once the imagined futures were complete, the design co*op compiled the drawings and text and produced the small guide book, "tour of the future." On April 24, 2010, the students gave a public tour of their imagined future.