1. Introduction - 2 Freedoms: Kerouac’s and Lowndes’

My friend and I used to joke about the magic can of beans cooked on a fire under the stars on the side of the road. Somehow, like in On The Road by Jack Kerouac, such moments emanate with wonder, expansive possibillity. Sitting there, maybe on a log or piece of concrete, looking out at the night - each time I drove cross-country I would look out (at a rest-stop in North Carolina, the park in Grand Junction, Colorado). But the joke is, after all, it’s just a can of beans - ha ha.

“America, that is the name of my unhappiness,” Kerouac wrote in Visions of Cody. It is this precise mix of promise and disappointment that marks the Heartland.

I’ve been to the Heartland in Western Massachusetts, Upstate New York, and two hours drive north of Los Angeles. But the Heartland is not just the non-urban, non-suburban, because the meanest ghetto of St. Louis Missouri (where the libraries closed and they even stopped collecting garbage for a while due to a lack of funds) - that too is the heartland. As is the Wal-Mart parking lot in Wyoming.

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On 25 July 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech in Berlin, next to the Siegessäule (Victory Column).
Below are a few photographs of the event (photorights: Jeremiah Day).

Read about the striking similarities between the presidential seal and the logo of Barack Obama.

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As part of the research within the Heartland territory, we invited artists, currently living in Europe, to travel to the Heartland and explore the region, its people and culture.
Otto Berchem spend about 2,5 months in Memphis. The Rhodes College, Center for the Outreach in the Development of the Arts as well as the Memphis College of Art collaborated with us in facilitating accommodation and a studio space for Berchem. Otto Berchem reported frequently about his findings and experiences in Memphis and area on this weblog.
Julika Rodelius is looking into young and ambitious political science students that want to pursue a career in the political landscape of the US. For that she is traveling between Chicago, New York as well as Washington D.C. following election campaigners and interviewing professionals and students.
Jeremiah Day will arrive in Alabama any moment soon to gather material on the history and legacy of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. From there he intends to establish a working relation with members of the Lowndes Freedom Organization. Soon we will be able to read more about his travels on this blog.
In the meantime Charles, Stephanie and I continue working on a series of works and projects to come for the first presentation of Heartland in the Van Abbemuseum and the Muziekcentrum in October in Eindhoven.

Every month, at least every month during the ’season’, the last Friday is reserved for openings, and trolley rides.

This past Friday was marked by the opening of Memphis College of Art MFA students Catherine Blackwell-Pena and John Gutierrez showing their work, as well as the launch of a project by Dwayne Butcher, for the 10th anniversary of the Urban Arts Commission.

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