Afraid to Get Out of My Car
Posted in Portfolio on May 29th, 2009 by Aaron Kohn – 1 Comment
[Video still rough]
The first day I went shooting, I came across a graffito that had a picture of a man and a woman with “Die” written between them. This was right behind the East Cleveland Public Library, just down the street from where John D. Rockefeller ran General Oil. From there I drove four miles to League Park in Hough where Babe Ruth hit his 500th homerun. The eighty-some blocks had foreclosures on every one. Some blocks were completely vacant. I held my camera up and shot out the window, without looking in the viewfinder, letting it capture what it saw. Depressed, it took me a few days to go back, and I worked on some films that I was editing in the meantime.
Alex Kotlowitz of the NYT Magazine put everything in perspective for me. My reflection in the window of the “Die” image was not an interaction. It was as though my view of East Cleveland and Hough had rejected what I saw. When I began talking to people on their porches, they didn’t act “victimized,” as one would expect. Most people seemed happy. I think that the story so many people thought was so negative, is actually a positive one. What happens to the fabric of a society when all of these people leave? One would expect the worst, but East Cleveland seems more resilient.
The goal as a storyteller is to find what is genuine, not always what is truth. To so many people, they know their own truths. That is what is genuine. I see my narrative from inside my car as a segue into the stories that actually make up this part of town.
Amid the foreclosures, thousands of abandoned homes, and news stories of violence and crime in East Cleveland, Cleveland, and Glenville, I found out what Alex Kotlowitz meant when he told me, “Storytelling is an act of hope.” There is no way that anyone could have a clear picture of our community from the news or from inside their cars, looking out at a vast landscape of destruction and abandonment.
I went places that people deemed “unsafe” only because they didn’t know better. When I got to these places on the other side of the barrier from my home, to the stories of people just a few miles from my own backyard, I came to see how strange the place I live in is.
On May 29, 131 people came together on the edge of East Cleveland for a thrilling happening where stories were shared. At “Get Out of Your Car,” my classmates, some teachers, lots of friends from both sides of the barrier, artists, poets, rappers, and some curious onlookers all came to the Cleveland Sculpture Center. At 6, my mentor, Phil Sandick, and I were still setting up bits and pieces of the exhibition that followed the path, which mimicked my own narrative. When people entered the gallery, they could follow roads on the walls into the main exhibit space. Along one wall was a superimposed route in blue tape that represented the path I traveled from Bratenahl to Shaker when I was a kid—the same route I used to record stories for this project. Along this route were 20 images, from inside my car and from around East Cleveland and Glenville, that depicted an array of interesting things I saw, from the perspective most people have of East Cleveland. Across the room on the facing wall were excerpts of the oral histories on rolls of paper taped over the brick similar to graffiti on the side of a home. Clips of the oral histories playing throughout the room from an iPod accompanied. Technological sound waves were visualized by string to portray the digital form of storytelling.
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[Photos of the Happening by Alex Crump]
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Following the roads along the walls led visitors past a bathroom where a movie was projected of my friends driving the route. The video called, “I Really Want to Get Out of My Kitchen” showed the video being projected in my kitchen as a time-lapse. I walk through and midnight snack as though dreaming about the route.
But the roads led past the video, out to a courtyard where a band and a whole lineup of performers were set up. Vince Robinson, one of the oral history subjects, and his “Jazz Poets” were there to lead an open mic session that included Vince’s band, Vince’s poetry, hip-hop performances by members of Al Porter’s (another oral history subject) hip-hop workshop instructors, and poetry and performances from other attendees.
A storm blew in appropriately during a poem about the violent Hough Riots, and as I ran to store the audio equipment away, assuming people would take the cue from the rain to leave, the band began setting up inside and everyone had moved in as well.
Overall, the evening was a huge success. For having only secured a location a week in advance, and only with one radio interview to promote the event, I wasn’t sure whether even five people would come.
The oral histories, photos, and music weren’t the ultimate purpose of the “happening”. My goal was to bring people down to East Cleveland (the edge at least) and let people meet and share their stories. A lot of people came up to me after asking, “Hey! Did you meet that guy who . . .” or “Wow, I’m really impressed with her . . .” and ultimately I think that a lot of people created their own new narratives at the event.
I don’t think that without talking to people and letting them have an avenue to tell their biographies that people would have been able to get beyond their stereotypes about East Cleveland. And it may be presumptuous of me to think that anyone did truly transcend those barriers, but I know that on some level they did, and that I certainly did.
Oral History Subjects:
