In winter 2005 I documented The Gates, a massive transformation of Central Park in New York City by Cristo and Jeanne-Claude. It was a study I undertook to prepare for a plenary presentation and workshop  at a summer institute for arts integration education at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina. My purpose was to weave artifacts created by the artists into ambient sound and video of the installation. The video preceded my presentation, which focused on stages of accumulating documentation, as well as reflection on the limits of the camera frame vs. the full scope and complexity of an event.

I recalled the experience because The Gates superimposed a complete, temporary layer over the landscape of Central Park, inviting all the city to step into a new dimension of familiar space.  It became a lens through which to view the park, to “see” it underlying this new interpretation.

It was beautiful. The color, movement of flags, and rhythmic placement of frames. The fact that you walked under the flags while viewing other flags along the pathways was mesmerizing. Having the experience, and documenting it, by stopping from time to time to “capture” another point of view or set of participants, is a way of seeing intentionally though the camera lens. It adds a documentary layer  to the experience. One to recover after the physical installation is gone.

I realize that the Flock House project, of which the Omaha Project is a part, is this kind of art making. A major difference is that the artist, Mary Mattingly, facilitates a community effort to create the lens. The planning group and work groups are co-designers and co-creators of the physical material and objects they bring into the New Market and Carver Bank landscapes. Residents inhabit the objects.

I realized that if I were to have a residency, I would want to open it to visitors, to engage them in making reflective documentation of their response to the Flock House as an object. I would also want to mirror Mary’s artist role by inviting a team to plan and facilitate.