“We built this city, it did not build us”

Mom: “inside or outside pick one” (iykyk)

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of popping to the opening of City Wild, the first solo exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Ian John Solomon at Playground Detroit just outside of downtown. The body of work is a conversation between Michigan’s robust natural environment and the urban realities that beset Detroiters.

Firstly, I am not a  photographer with years of developed practice. Furthermore, I am not a person with an intimate understanding of the photography practice. I say that as both a disclaimer but also to signal my relationship to the art. I write this reflection as an environmental justice organizer in Detroit. And I write this as a lifelong Eastsider who has watched firsthand as the  health and dignity of working class people has been gambled to power communities farther abroad. 

Moments Before…

Moments before this installation, I sat in La Ventana sipping chai tea and journaling. Next to me sat an older black man, in conversation with an audibly Eastern-European  couple. “It’s so good to see you” they enthused. They were past acquaintances of his It seemed. With me sitting in between them, they caught up about their travels and the city’s revitalization in their time away. I was ear-hustling a bit, but in my defense they were talking across me. 

“This is my building; I love what they’ve done with this place” he shared multiple times sitting tall and proud. It was almost as if he wanted the entire counter to celebrate with him. And candidly,  I had never thought about who owned or occupied the building. I just enjoyed their tea & pastries. I tend to assume the worst whenever the question of ownership comes up in Detroit. Not thinking about it was great self protection from the sobering reality that Black Detroiters do not own much of the spaces we occupy.

Following this mundane experience, I walked into the exhibition considering ownership and its contradictions. I harbored feelings of grief but also reverence for those who persist.

My Gut Tells Me…

Self protection and safety are two ideas I sat with while viewing City Wild.

Coming into community organizing, I never really saw myself as someone who would engage in environmental justice. I mostly started organizing in reaction to national “thoughts and prayers” moments accessible through 6 inch screens. The plight of black people in this nation is both prodigious and vast, so much so that one crisis often hides the existence of another. Audre Lorde’s claim that “we are not single-issue people” is an act of resistance against dominant narratives that often pit our issues against eachother.

And so it makes sense to me that the nature of our climate would be far clearer to me in a moment of uncertainty where others came to recognize the same as I did.

It was not until June 26, 2021 that I would truly reckon with just how here the climate crisis actually is. For the better part of my youth, I was aware of climate change and global warming but it was always presented in a way that implied "distance" from our urban environment.  We always saw Michigan as a "climate haven" where other climate refugees might escape to in the event that conditions worsen. These ideas would be held up to a microscope in Summer 2021 when many of us kicked our way through knee-high water for days.

As Zoomers, we learned to prioritize “thoughts and prayer” moments–not the actionable steps we can be taking daily to make this world a better place. These moments felt…3-D of sorts–close enough emotionally for us to align our values with, but far to the degree that we don’t feel a sense of stake in them. 

We learned to engage in reformist solutions via policy and investment, not necessarily more immediate, localized solutions that we can foster together. In many ways, we learned the same political shield that was proposed to our ancestors, but this time it was caked into every digital space we occupy. For us, self-protection had become our politic instead of nuance, contradictions and conflict. Under this guise, Michigan preserved it's facade as a Climate Haven.

So what world is City Wild Reckoning with? 

We’re often told to “wait until we win this election” or that we’re voting “strategically” in moments where we should ask more curious questions about our conditions and the ways out of them. We are almost a month out from a historic election where our inability to hear eachother caused more confusion and strife than many of our folks will be able to bear. These stories are however not new to those in rust belt cities. Furthermore they're even far less groundbreaking for the American South that has stood in the crossfire of Northern individualism.

Political dispossession had been the paradigm of post-bankruptcy Detroit where austerity from external actors gutted Detroit of worker protections, human rights, and generational wealth. Under these conditions, Michigan would go from a climate haven to a goldmine for corporations.

In December 2012, Public Act 436 attacked democracy and the people who believe in it.

I promise, I’m gonna talk about the art in a bit, but I think this is an important backdrop for the political context the art lives in. 

For those who are not policy nerds, Public Act 436 gave the state unilateral power to install an emergency manager in any local unit of government or school district deemed to be in financial crisis. An almost Identical bill, Public Act 4, had been stricken down by the popular vote (stricken down by 53% of Michigan voters and 82% of Detroit voters). However, Gov. Rick Snyder had an evil contingency plan on standby with Public Act 436, moving it very quickly through our state legislature and to his desk.  

The bill was passed during “Lame Duck”–the period following an election where state lawmakers often pass a wide array of policies that would likely not pass in the incoming regime change that following year. The period's name stems from the “lame ducks”, or lawmakers that did not get re-elected and are getting left behind. It's a particularly important event that happens following most elections, and politicians are often not very forthcoming about it. 

Public Act 436 would have a $30,000 appropriation attached to it making it referendum proof since the Michigan Constitution states that any policy that appropriates money can not be stricken down by the people via a popular vote. This meant that the people could not bring the issue of emergency management back to the ballot. Such a decision would have devastating impacts on black & brown people here in Michigan.

We have lived in the effects of this decision ever since. 

So when we talk about disinvestment, we cannot talk about it as coincidence. It was a long term strategy to seize resources, land, and decision making power from black, brown, and poor people. The Flint Water Crisis does not happen without this bill. Detroit Water & Sewage does not get consolidated into a privately owned company without this bill. And the increasing corporate Influence of Investor owned utilities while simultaneously causing health harms does not happen without this bill. Our very climate conditions we live in are because of the actions of corporations, their lobbyists, and the lawmakers who have sold us out to have a seat at their table. 

So what does the art say to me?

City Wild is an “invitation to explore Detroit residents’ relation to Detroit’s urban landscape and Michigan’s natural landscapes, employing a variety of mediums including collage, portraiture, and a series of 100 instant film Polaroid photographs encased in steel.  - Jena Brooker, Bridge Detroit. 

Much can be garnered from this exhibition. Upon arriving, we are greeted by an exhibition title stating the following:

“...On flat ground our unmovable mountains are industry and caste, artificial ridges, shaping our living like sacred lands

And I love my valley. And I still need what’s on the other side”

There’s a man-made gap between urban realities and climate resiliency–a racist history of disinvestment and restriction has denied us our “haven.” Through collapsing Detroit’s East Side and Michigan’s broader natural spaces, we can expand, reframe and investigate “home” for our collective future’s sake. 

We then observe the beauty Michigan’s outdoor landscape has to offer, and the experiences of black people in those landscapes. In both the environments and people we see a certain freedom that only nature can provide: The imperfections of sand between our feet. Finding comfort in eachother in ways that are patient and soft. And the realization that our perception of familiar landscapes such as Belle Isle are determined solely through the lens/frame we are presented.

I considered how our phone’s snapshot of natural experiences never quite evokes for others what we felt in the moment we captured them. I'd say this did a great job os loosening me up before grappling with the heavier aspects of this exhibition. 

Just footsteps away from these photos, journalist and screenwriter Imani Mixon implies that nature encourages us to have a sense of identity and agency that the big city can not provide. These freedoms include de-centering the “urban” and allowing our bodies the comfort they naturally desire. To hear her reflections on transformative outdoor experience, look to her words…

“...The city speaks for you before you can speak for yourself in a way that I don’t think the land ever can” – Imani Mixon

I returned to those two words…safety and self protection. We are constantly grappling with public safety and the lack thereof in our urban environment. We take chances on dangerous 2-ton vehicles to take us from building to building yet we fear the threat of walking through the woods. In the city, our lives are constructed around limiting the greatest amount of risk possible. Yet we are always feeling anxious about our day-to-day experiences. The personas we take up are attempts to claim scarce real estate in an environment where our worth is determined by what we own and what can be produced from it. We are not only protecting ourselves from risk and newness. We are also protecting our city from having to value our… selves. 

what we give attention to grows. what we pay attention to grows. - adrienne maree brown

And so I think that both these primers were necessary to reckon with before engaging with four pieces that wake up a lot of very complicated feelings for us. We are shown the beauty of our natural landscapes so that we might consider who we are, and where we are making concessions daily. 

I would do a horrible job of explaining the really cool technique used for these final pieces so I won’t attempt it. What I will say is that the images we see are all familiar stories to us. We see: matriarchal homes auctioned off in sub-prime mortgages, the swings we snuck off to for first kisses, fights, and everything in between, and we reflect on the mercy of water. 

Our folks have been underwater for years since the torrential storms of 2021. While select families have restored their living spaces, many others have not. Elders are in the dark not only in the literal sense, but also in the dark because of shadowy mother fuckers that decide we're not worth providing a clean, reliable, and equitable power grid to. And our air is just as suffocating as the industries that limit both it and our possibilities. Our people now need climate action that is both immediate and proactive. 

But there is hope…

The Watering Hole

Fuck that dooming shit hahahahah! I don't stay there long.

I had to sit with these pieces a bit to consider all the feelings they surfaced for me. The following morning, I sat in Kresge Court, simply with my green little journal tapping the clunky shoes I should’ve worn the night before—they go with that sweater wayyyy better. 

In the morning after, I did not feel rage. I did not feel sorrow. I felt clarity on the following: how we got here, when it became impossible to ignore for me, and what I’ve learned since. My climate story is not one that happened “fourscore and seven years ago.” Even at my young age, I had to fill the cracks in our city that seeped into my own home. This has been the story of many. When you talk to folk, they feel a sense of clarity on what works for them and what doesn't. They may not yet have the language to articulate it to those who make decisions about their livelihood, but they are speaking louder and more often. They will not stop speaking.

If the city speaks for us, it will say many things that did not come from our mouths. The narratives proposed by politicians and corporations are not our needs. They furthermore won't speak to the needs of our land. Our needs can only be proposed by us. 

And so I considered what my body felt this year whenever I traversed the state of Michigan. Consistently I felt this need to be near the water. I will never forget visiting Bond Falls after a deeply powerful organizing workshop at the Lac Vieux Desert reservation in Watersmeet Michigan. I grappled with how Ojibwe comrades, who share many similar experiences to black folk, talked about safety and what it means to protect eachother. And in that moment I took some really cool photos of some shit I had never fathomed would be in Michigan. 

The world we built in that workshop was not one of generalizations and scarcity. It was quite the opposite. It was grounding in ways that I had not experienced before. I learned about native sovereignty and what it can look like if we talk to eachother about how aligning those visions is in our best interest. 

In times of uncertainty, togetherness is in our best interest. Our body’s natural needs are in our best interest. What comes from those  is the city we build. So consider:

1. Where do I feel restricted? In these moments, where do I find freedom?

2. In what moments am I outdoors? What do I feel/think about those environments while there?

3. What in nature am I curious about? Is it possible to learn more about them soon? When?

4. Who might feel the same?

Peace & Love; let’s grab crayons, 

Kamau