The tide and the river: an interview with SOS (Safety Orange Swimmers) ArtPrize artist Ann Hirsch
The work, now installed in the Grand River as part of ArtPrize 9, is designed as a way to spark conversation about immigration and the near-23 million displaced people around the world.
A+J Art and Design, a collaborative team based in Boston, are one of the recipients of the ArtPrize Featured Public Projects grants this year. Ann Hirsch and Jeremy Angier’s project will be one of two entries in the Grand River. As a way to highlight some of the stories behind the development of the dozens of projects that received grants this year, I decided to mail a small questionnaire to artists that we could then publish on the ArtPrize Blog. Ann and Jeremy responded by asking if we could have a longer conversation about their work and the shifting realities of immigration, which their work explores, as well as the political forces challenging the country — and even ArtPrize itself. I happily agreed.
For context, it’s relevant to note that we spoke on September 6, 2017, the day after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that DACA would be rescinded, and in between Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Kevin Buist: Tell me the story about how “SOS (Safety Orange Swimmers)” was first installed.
Ann Hirsch: There’s an event here [in Boston], an arts community has an open studio event every year, and they commission a public artwork for a channel off of Boston Harbor called Fort Point Channel. We put it in the water in October, when immigration was a very significant issue in the presidential campaign, but it wasn’t the only very significant issue. We felt deeply about it as children of immigrants, as my husband was recently naturalized, Jeremy is my husband and partner in the artwork. We are very close to immigration issues in our lives, so to hear some of the rhetoric around immigration attitudes in this country coming out some of the mouths in the run up to the election was extremely disturbing. And also at the time there were 21.3 million refugees in the world, and now it’s up close to 23 million. But at the time, it seemed clear that this was just going to pass. But yesterday, of course, there’s talk about ending DACA. All of those issues have become much more forefronted because they’re a big political wedge that’s dividing all of us. Immigration is an issue that’s the biggest wedge issue that we have right now. Our refugee policy has gotten thrown into the mix. I just think that, as you were saying, there’s a loss of optimism, it’s just hard… I don’t how to articulate this… It’s just hard.
KB: I know.
AH: I think coming together and being in a place where we can share our views and talk, whatever our positions are, that’s probably the most important thing. Without wanting to be overly bold about the work, I think at the very least one thing that “SOS (Safety Orange Swimmers)” is seeking to do is to at least open conversations about a predicament that is happening all over the world, as people look every which way. Something has to be done, nobody’s not affected. I think that a lot of people feel that way in Grand Rapids and all over the country and they’re not being heard right now. Not enough anyway.
KB: We were talking earlier about how I was observing that ArtPrize… It’s a strange phenomenon because ArtPrize is essentially the same as it has been for years, but there is a sense that the ground has shifted beneath it. The mood and the overall political context and tone of the country has changed from the last ArtPrize to this ArtPrize. It’s interesting to me that this work was first installed October of last year and now it will be reinstalled a year later. Talk about how you think that shift in political tone as well as the ongoing debates around immigration, how do you think that will change the reading of the work?
AH: That’s a complicated issue. I would first want to say that the actual body of water that we’re putting work in will totally change the piece because the previous installation was in a tidal channel. So the group of swimmers was constantly changing direction, sometimes they weren’t all facing the same way, they were moving towards and away from one another, they were always changing. It was a flexible situation. Now in the Grand River what we’ll see is the installation with all of the swimmers moving in one direction because the river is only moving in one direction. So the march of the piece will be… Well there was no feeling like that, it was changing, and now it seems like everything is vitrified a little bit with the piece. The crisis that we’re facing, it’s maybe mirroring that feeling. The piece will be mirroring the feeling of the vitrification of the issue.
KB: Right. A river instead of a tide.
AH: Yeah, exactly. The push in one direction, the swimmers are all kind of swimming up river. For us as artists one of the things that we saw people reacting to is the idea that the figures are almost like performers in a theatrical piece. A lot of people actually thought that they were real. They would say, ‘They should get out of the water, it must be cold.’ So there is this strange conflation with a performance piece with the sculpture installation. Thinking about how the piece is going to work in the Grand River, the idea that there actually isn’t going to be too much interaction and maybe that’s part of the work. We’re watching a spectacle unfolding and we’re actually not doing anything about it except taking pictures. Maybe that’s part of the new narrative of the piece.
KB: Yeah, there’s a certain powerlessness to that. But it’s true. The other thing that occurred to me, on this topic of how one work can be reinstalled and read differently, and going back to the news cycle that dominates everything, we’re talking right now in this moment in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and on the eve of Hurricane Irma, and I couldn’t help but think that the work — perhaps intentionally, perhaps not — seems to relate to flooding. Have you thought about that at all? I couldn’t help but read that into it, looking at it after looking at the news.
AH: No I hadn’t thought of that, Kevin. I [am thinking now] about how Harvey and Irma will create internally displaced people in this country, and that’s something that has an association with other countries outside the US. The idea of an internally displaced person, that’s actually what the storms are going to do, and are doing. Right, I hadn’t thought of that.
KB: It is related in a way, because immigration is really about displacement, right? It may not be a flood driving people out of North Africa and over the Mediterranean, but it’s displacement nonetheless. It’s all people seeking refuge because they can’t stay where they are.
AH: Exactly. You look at UNHCR numbers, I think they estimate that there are 65 million internally displaced people. 23 million refugees, then there are migrants that are more economically based migration issues. All of these issues are intertwined. When you think about what you hear in our current political climate it’s all about how we can’t let anybody in. If we hadn’t let people in, who would be here?
KB: Not me.
AH: I’m thinking a lot about… we’re working on another project here in Boston on a site in central Boston and talking about early inhabitants in Boston, and Native Americans. This entire area was settled for centuries and millennia by Native Americans, certainly the same is true in Grand Rapids. But when I think about immigration in Grand Rapids it’s really a very recent story, and it’s a very big, rapid story. We’re both interested to see how people respond to the work there, given how many people are new arrivals.
KB: Yeah, there are a lot. There’s a large Dutch community here, but that immigration story is mostly a few generations old now, and memories can be very, very short. People forget that even as they celebrate their Dutch heritage, they often can’t see the parallels. I was going to ask, what other projects have you guys been working on, and how do they relate to this one?
AH: The new piece we’re working on… Have you been to Boston?
KB: I haven’t, actually.
AH: It’s a smallish city. I came here from New York. It’s a small, very navigable city, very walkable and bikable city. We have a lot of Revolutionary War sites, of course. The project we’re working on is for North Square, which is where Paul Revere’s house still exists. So the piece, what it’s doing is taking the history of North Square over a broad course of time and looking at the different narratives that could be found in the square and creating separate sculptures based on those different narratives. We’re saying, this place doesn’t have a linear history, it doesn’t have one story to it, and it’s not the story of one group of people, it’s a whole lot of people over a long course of time. Part of the project is an extension of what I’ve been doing for the past year, which is working as an artist in residence in a local community center through the city of Boston. I’m making artwork with a community of non-art makers, collaborating on a series of works together. It’s really the first time I’ve done something like that and the community engagement experience I’ve had there is coming into the new project in North Square. It’s going to have some of the same things going on with it that “SOS Swimmers” does, where we’re blending digital approaches with traditional approaches.
