美国国家公共电台 NPR Dre Urhahn: How Can Public Art Projects Transform Rough Neighborhoods?

 

GUY RAZ, HOST:

So can you tell me about the - how the favela painting project started. Like, did you guys just go to Rio and - you know, to sort of check them out?

DRE URHAHN: No, it was actually different. Jeroen - he had won a competition to make a documentary² for MTV.

RAZ: This is Dre Urhahn. And Dre, along with his friend and fellow artist Jeroen Koolhaas, who he just mentioned, made that documentary. It was about Brazilian hip-hop music in the favelas of Rio. But their time in Brazil led to another art project, something completely different.

URHAHN: We - when we were making the documentary and we were just spending a lot of time with the people, there was this constant return of this word image, that people in society around the slums⁴ - they had this certain image of what the favela was like and what the people from the favela were like. And we were also thinking like, could we also make some sort of a statement?

And a visual statement was the thing that came to mind immediately. Like, could we just make something that looks nice so that if people look at the place and they already know that they are going to dislike it, and all of a sudden, they're confronted⁵ with something beautiful? And that would kind of change their minds.

RAZ: And so the idea they came up with was to create a giant mural spread across many, many buildings so that you would have to look at it from a distance to see the entire thing, and they decided⁶ to stay in Brazil and give it a shot.

URHAHN: I think our roles change a lot when we travel. Like, we - sometimes we arrive somewhere as a documentary maker⁷, and we leave as a socially responsible painter.

RAZ: Here's Dre and Jeroen on the TED¹ stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

JEROEN KOOLHAAS: We picked three houses in the center of the community, and we start here. We made a few designs, and everybody liked this design of a boy flying a kite the best. So we started painting, and the first thing we did was to paint everything blue. And we thought that looked already pretty good. But they hated it. The people who lived there really hated it. They said, what did you do? You painted our house in exactly the same color as the police station.

(LAUGHTER)

KOOLHAAS: In a favela, that is not a good thing - also the same color as the prison cell. So we quickly went ahead and we painted the boy. But still, it wasn't good because the little kids started coming up to us and they said, you know, it's a boy flying a kite, but where is his kite? We said, it's art. You know, you have to imagine the kite.

(LAUGHTER)

KOOLHAAS: And they said, no, no, no, we want to see the kite. So we quickly installed a kite way up high on the hill so that you could see the boy flying the kite, and you could actually see a kite. So the local news started writing about it, which is great. And then even the Guardian⁸ wrote about it - "Notorious⁹ Slum³ Becomes Open-Air Gallery."

RAZ: I mean, the perception¹⁰ of favelas is that these are unwelcoming, dangerous, ugly places. And part of what you were trying to do is to change that perception by actually sort of overlaying this beautiful piece of artwork over the favela. It was almost forcing people to think about it in a different way.

URHAHN: Totally. It's totally an invitation to think about the people that live there in a different way. And I remember very well that the participants in our project - I mean, we worked with, like, big groups of people that are from the neighborhood, so it's not just us. But there was a piece written in the newspaper, and they talked about the inhabitants as artists and not as criminals, and that was, like, a game-changer for them. And they said, look, they're writing about us as people.

I think that really got to us. And again, this wasn't really, like, a super predetermined plan. This is something that we stumbled¹¹ upon. Like, this happened, and then we thought, oh, my God, if this happened in - on the small scale, let's build it out. Let's make it 10 times bigger and see if it happens again.

RAZ: So that's what Dre and Jeroen did. They went to another favela in Rio and started on another large-scale art project.

URHAHN: The second painting we made was actually not on a wall, but it was on a complete street. And we painted this giant river of, like, Japanese koi carp. It was quite insane¹². It's, like, the most unexpected thing.

RAZ: And then they moved on to another neighborhood.

URHAHN: The Santa Marta project was quite simple. At the end, and it just looks like a very simple, happy explosion of colors. That's all I can describe it as. It goes over, like, 27 different houses.

RAZ: And as their art projects attracted more attention, they started to get requests from all over the world.

URHAHN: Yeah, it's - for the last 10 years, we've been just running around, painting.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

URHAHN: So then we receive an unexpected phone call from the Philadelphia Mural Arts program, and they had this question, if this would actually work in North Philly, which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. So we immediately said yes. The project took almost two years to complete, and we made individual designs for every single house on the avenue that we painted.

And we made these designs together with the local store owners, the building owners and a team of about a dozen young men and women that were hired, and then they were trained as painters. And together, they transformed their own neighborhood - the whole street - into a giant patchwork¹⁴ of color.

RAZ: It's amazing when you see images of it from above, like a drone image, or from far away. I mean, I don't know what it looked like before, but you can imagine that it did have a pretty big impact on that neighborhood, on that community.

URHAHN: Yeah, totally, and I'm - I love to follow - like, my Instagram is mostly people from the different projects where we worked and lived. And I'm following a lot of the people that live in Philadelphia, and it's great to see that the painting still has, like, a big impact on their images - like, the pictures that they take or music videos that they make. There's people that do dance shows in front of them or clothing designers come out and do their fashion shows there. And it just becomes, like, a thing. Like, their neighborhood is the colorful neighborhood.

RAZ: Do you think that we - sometimes when we think about transforming neighborhoods or communities or doing big public projects, we don't just consider something as simple as beauty, right? Like, beauty can really transform - psychologically transform how people think about their own spaces and places.

URHAHN: I think that there's two qualities. It's beauty and it's attention. If you do a two-year project, you show two year worth of full-time¹⁵ love and dedication¹⁶ to a neighborhood and its people, and it's something that people take very, very serious. A good example was when we arrived, we put posters everywhere.

We flyered (ph) and we had people going door to door, asking the merchants to come together for a meeting. And it was only three people that came out. Like, there's always these three people, right? And we did the same thing after the project was done, and we needed to change, like, the venue¹³ because it couldn't hold all the people, and everybody came together. And I mean, I'm not saying it changed the world, but, I mean, that shows something.

RAZ: Dre Urhahn - you can find out more about Dre and Jeroen's projects at their website favelapainting.com. And you can watch their talk at ted.com.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

2 documentary   

adj.文献的；n.纪录片

参考例句：

• This case lacked documentary proof.本案缺少书面证据。
• I watched a documentary on the Civil War.我看了一部关于内战的纪录片。

3 slum   

n.贫民窟，贫民区；vi.（因好奇而）逛贫民区

参考例句：

• These children came from a slum area.这些孩子来自贫民窟区。
• What a wretched existence the people in the slum lead!这个贫民窟里的人们过着多么令人悲惨的生活啊！

4 slums   

n.贫民窟，贫民区( slum的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• These slums are an epitaph to the housing policy of the 1960s. 这些贫民窟是20世纪60年代住房政策的遗迹。
• the poverty and squalor of the slums 贫民窟的贫穷和肮脏

5 confronted   

面对( confront的过去式和过去分词 )； 使面对； 使对质； 处理

参考例句：

• When we confronted him, he denied everything. 我们与他当面对质时，他什么都不承认。
• The writer confronted his pile of work with determination. 那作家下决心面对成堆的工作。

6 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

7 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

8 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

9 notorious   

adj.臭名昭著的，声名狼藉的

参考例句：

• He was notorious as a gambler.他是臭名昭著的赌徒。
• His short temper had become notorious.他的臭脾气是出了名的。

10 perception   

n.感知，感觉，觉察(力)；认识，观念，看法

参考例句：

• What's your perception of the matter?你对此事有什么看法？
• He was a man of keen perception.他是一个感觉敏锐的人。

11 stumbled   

v.（不顺畅地）说( stumble的过去式和过去分词 )；跌跌撞撞地走；绊脚；（说话、演奏等）出错

参考例句：

• I stumbled and sprained my ankle. 我摔了一跤，把脚脖子扭了。
• The child stumbled and fell. 孩子绊了一下，摔倒了。

12 insane   

adj.蠢极的，荒唐的，精神错乱的，疯狂的

参考例句：

• Insane people are sometimes dangerous.精神病人有时非常危险。
• The letter made her insane with jealousy.那封信使她妒忌得发疯。

13 venue   

n.犯罪地点，审判地，管辖地，发生地点，集合地点

参考例句：

• The hall provided a venue for weddings and other functions.大厅给婚礼和其他社会活动提供了场所。
• The chosen venue caused great controversy among the people.人们就审判地点的问题产生了极大的争议。

14 patchwork   

n.混杂物；拼缝物

参考例句：

• That proposal is nothing else other than a patchwork.那个建议只是一个大杂烩而已。
• She patched new cloth to the old coat,so It'seemed mere patchwork. 她把新布初到那件旧上衣上，所以那件衣服看上去就象拼凑起来的东西。

15 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

16 dedication   

n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞

参考例句：

• We admire her courage,compassion and dedication.我们钦佩她的勇气、爱心和奉献精神。
• Her dedication to her work was admirable.她对工作的奉献精神可钦可佩。