reinventing our cities and re and chanting the world who gets a say in designing where they live and what if more of us did this week we visit with mary miss guggenheim fellow and celebrated artist whose organization the city as living laboratory strives to empower regular people to create not the clich of the sustainable city but of living and breathing cities of sustenance she says then we speak to scholars sylvia how could the artists imagination help make issues more accessible to people to recognize as not just the icing on the cake the thing that is always disposed of first but really essential members of the conversation mary we're connecting with you here in your studio in tribe becca when did you move in here i moved in in one nine hundred seventy i lived around the corner in the old herring factory when we moved in down here there were spice and coffee and cheese companies all over there was a butter company across the street there were  steve's fumes not always nicely coming in our back window it's completely transformed around here do you feel like you have me so no no i did not say i do not know where where i live anymore i can't get down the street because there are so many baby carriages it's a totally different place where you always driven by the sense of how do you reconnect people to its place was that a driving influence for you was really important and i think that's what ended up separating me and my work early on from the land artists because they were willing to go out in the desert and build something and what really interested me was more about what a person experiences and how you engage people with places and structures in their own environment we call themselves a laboratory city is living laboratory because we're interested in testing how we wing gauge people so that's what got us out walking the corridor broadway five point five million people per day ride the subway it's the largest shared urban infrastructure this is red square it's an apartment building that was built at the fall of communism  represents artists scientists walk or talk that has happened so we've done almost fifty of these so we've really been investigating the whole corridor but now our attention is really focusing  appear on cortlandt park starting at frank cortlandt park and going down to the harlem river this is really an interesting project every time it rains even a little bit this area floods all along broadway the basement into westchester county and in the early teens of the twentieth century the water was put into the sewer the broadway sewer so the sewer line goes under broadway cuts across and finally goes into the harlem river but there are about forty five million gallons of water in there that go into the sewer so it ends up going in a sewage into the harlem river and it's one of the worst polluters of the harlem river so people have talked for a long time about how it might be possible to daylight to it's broken that means letting it see the light of day taking it out of the sewer so the friends are non questioning like wait where does this water go and why is this clean water going into the city sewer system you don't think about what happens when i take a shower what happens when i flush a toilet to about water you just know the city takes care of it and  your end but unfortunately the city is not taking care of all of it parks department has been on board with day lending for many many years now we are slowly getting d p to be on board and the main issue for them has always been well the city doesn't own the property so it probably can't happen but the solutions that they've come up for dealing with this are absolutely horrible they're horrendous it's like oh we'll just build these huge catch basins up the northern end of the park and they can hold the water and look well no those are forest you're not going to take mean it can't be in the city as a living lab has been really great as far as getting the word out about the project getting more people informed we have our limited reach and our focus has really been on the environmental aspects of it the more people that are aware of it it will help right rea that to a level a priority for the city to do then we can show that more people support and this is what everybody wants we're imagining that there could be a sound wall between the highway and the corridor or itself and that there could be an elevated pathway and then that the stream could run down that corridor or people could actually have access to nature and not just the highway so one of the things that we're doing is trying to find ways to draw attention one of our most interesting projects was an artist named bob brain who did temporary tattoos the deep hand painted on to people people would line up they could not wait to have this done of a tracing the track of to just yes so it's showing the original track which you can see here here's what it used to be now it's in the broadway sewer and here's where we want it to be along the you know major deacon we were proposing this is one of our projects than one of our board members said isn't that a little weird actually it turned out to be like the most impact behind this came out of my decades of working in the public realm because that's where all my work has been done but it's really difficult to have access and i wanted to try to imagine a way that artist reckoned nice as being able to have an essential complementary role at the table when issues come up in the city and what difference do artists make in those conversations i think it's really about the kind of emotional sensual psychological aspects of art that give people something to relate to imagining that this co broadway that i'm looking at now and have been for a member of years that in another twenty or thirty years it could be really transformed this could become the corridor that looks at different social structures different ecological structures where it's this rich environment instead of one that's just kind of a drain on the people who live nearby in their busy lives where they're everywhere all of us are just running all the time how do you begin to let their lives echo around the people who have come to new york they might be familiar with one of the pieces that really has changed our landscape and that's down in battery park south cove can you tell us what your project was what we idea was what was the problem you were trying to solve the problem was that i'd been living in this neighborhood by the river since one thousand nine hundred seventy and we couldn't get to the river so i wanted to do something that would really give people the water that you would hear it that you would smell out that you would get down close to it so we you know made it so that the walkway ramps down that there's a visual connection between the land and the water because i have these pilings podium little reminiscent in a way of the old pilings that used to be interact with them it's not to say oh well look at this look at me i'm i'm influencing everything it's more to say yes artists can really have an important role which is the thing that got me to start  community has to be intended not as a gated reality a grouping of people joined by exclusive interests and separating them from others but rather as a quality of relations a principle of cooperation and of responsibility to each other and the health of the forests the seas the animals so right sylvia federici but how can we get there from here the practice of commenting in the idea that we might hold and manage land and assets together in common holds a lot of appeal these days to help us think forward as we do on the show we have two world renowned experts on commenting in the house who the author of among other classics the magna carta manifesto i am overjoyed and feel tremendously lucky to have the two of you together in studio let's talk about the role of the commons in american history i was just i spent some time during the election election season in appalachia and heard a lot about the appalachian commons about which i knew very little it is often told the story of the commons as if it was in just medival england but that's not the case peter what's american about it you know what's american about it because unlike europe america american capitalism is born in destruction of the commons in europe we used to be caught european capitalism was born on the destruction of f m actually as we go further we see that the destruction of the commons is all over but in appalachia in particular this is been a zone of freedom like and the latest to be privatized with a mountaintop removal xah destructions of mountains the pollutions of rivers has produced the opposite in the logical terms that is this was th zone that elected j f k if you remember one thousand nine hundred sixty the kennedy this was where poverty was discovered was actually happening and appalachia our communities over many generations that have been multi ethnic have been native american been african american been runaway slaves it's freedom land it's no accident that john brown censored the struggle for abolition in appalachia and the mountains but now it's the land of monoculture huge land owners coal mining companies that have very little concern for the community or the or the plan or jump to here we've got an urban tradition of com here in the united states too what does that look like to you and how do we bring this picture together is something alive today when i think what these are life today is that more and more people have been displaced in the last three four decades in particular and also thanks to immigrant people you know who come from this south of the continent where you still have for what we are on the planet we're our planet is not real estate our planet is not a jail to throw people off of it's not a wilderness it can be a home and sylvia just said in this great book rian chance in the world we have to make a home with one another and practice principles of reciprocity redistribution obligation and respect to him chant is to sing into community once again so what does feminism got to have got to do with all of this i think a lot because i think today women are really on the front line in terms of already creating commons and in particular one of the things i've been happening is the common in of reproductive activities and i just came back from if forty days trip through latin america and that's a place where you can really see it in the most intense hens so when i'm saying the production for example you know i've been in the communities where women are doing a lot of the construction of the day to  activities that are produced in people's life with the popular kitchen collective kitchen urban gardens or so organizing network of activities in a cooperative way for example i was in a place called vision twenty one twenty fourth am old traditional low paid low respected work ok you may say that on the other hand what is happening so it's not an attempt to the police the state but it's a does this change marxism peter that i mean the commons are really the commons is not how do we place of redistribution of resources it's also a place of resistance this is the lesson of standing rock just thinking of north america and the kitchens and standing rock the care of the children the care of the elderly those who provided coal clothes those who in chance of the land with their notions of sacredness and the purity of the water the water protectors were led by women young women a new generation so this new leadership and there's perhaps new appreciation new valuing of certain kinds of work is there also a shift in our sights of struggle one hundred years ago two hundred years ago it was the the the factory floor the the physical production of stuff was the place of struggle now many of us work no where near a factory floor and these issues of our over the world water and food and then house him we have to find ways of working with one another not to replace the state or instead of the say the commons is neither the market nor the state it's a way of survival and it's a way of renewing forms of cooperation forms of value with our differences sex race gender because it requires us to talk to one another among other things occupy did have standing rocked us i'm also looking at what's happening in argentina what's happening in brazil what's happening in this country and we're seeing the rejection of all things calm and the increasing isolation and clinging to private industry the begging of amazon please please please come we'll give you public money so what's happening here it's not all like well not everyone's as impressed as as we are perhaps inspiration these are the people who built new york after all of the mohawk high iron folks when i was also thinking of the so called birthplace of democracy in greece and the greek comma the greek common in has been on the forefront the edge of the massacres of our bases of reproduction of health of education of housing with the neo liberal onslaught that paved the way for trump that paved the way for the rise of fascist creatures and in the halls of power what would you say that we should keep our eyes on what are you watching as you look at the landscape out there for for for green shoots for bright sparks for calming or there are so many i mean the young people especially that's what i look to and i see new attitudes no longer formed by the cold war but formed by these experiences which to you and me may seem new but to them are natural again occupy stand in iraq the zapatistas these are places where attempts have been made and defeats have occurred but we've defeat the memory keeper's keep it alive oh i ask you the same question sylvia but i will throw out the thought that i didn't mention at the beginning which is we've just seen a midterm election where it seemed to me ironic that you have kind of the bastion of capital gotten us electoral system running its operations off an incredible off a project of common in with people in the election campaigns that i saw all across this country working together sharing resources sharing lists sharing information giving car rides helping people to the polls it's not your typical commenting project but it honored to be with you