News

Actions

Iowa City art project explores questions about common spaces

Retirement
Posted 9:56 PM, Aug 20, 2022

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — If you stand at the Iowa City Senior Center with headphones in, you can hear a woman’s voice telling you that she’s been listening to words for 50 years in Iowa City.

A slight rasp to her voice, she names some writers who were here before the UNESCO City of Literature designation.

She’ll tell you how the building you’re standing in front of was once a post office, which witnessed the words of these writers mailed out to the world.

“I am listening,” she said. “We are listening. You are listening. Now.”

Birds chirp and traffic noises mix with sounds of a typewriter that slowly evolve into other sounds, including one reminiscent of a metal clang.

That’s just a snippet of one of 10 audio tracks, featuring contributions by a dozen predominantly local artists and groups, corresponding to parking spaces across Iowa City as part of the aptly titled project, “The Parking Spaces.”

It’s an expanded version of 2020’s “The Parking Space Project” by Stephanie Miracle, Steven Willis and Ramin Roshandel. Located on the fourth floor of the Chauncey Swan ramp, “The Parking Space Project” was a 30-minute site-specific audio installation where people were guided toward different points in the space for a sonic experience.

In this latest version, listeners can visit the website theparkingspaces.com or scan the QR code found at each location and hear each piece, a majority 10 minutes or less. There’s no specific points at a location where listeners are required to start.

Spaces included in the project include the Chauncey Swan Park, with audio from the organizers of FilmScene’s podcast, or the Capitol Street parking ramp, with contributions from poet and performer Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey and the band Wave Cage.

Miracle, a choreographer and teaching artist, told the Press-Citizen that the first iteration of the project attracted listeners from overseas and others who checked it out months after it debuted.

“Their response was just so special to hear them say, ‘Oh, these particular birds were flying overhead,’ or, ‘I saw someone crossing the street at this time,’ or something where it felt like that moment they chose to listen, it had been a perfect timing for them,” she said. “We loved how unpredictable that was, and yet it was available for people to listen in a moment that was right for them.”

There was interest, both from listeners and the trio, to expand the project.

Two years later, with the help of grants, including one from Iowa City, “The Parking Spaces” debuted.

‘The Parking Spaces’ invites listeners to everyday spaces across Iowa City

Built into this project is “patience,” as Miracle describes it, in which the sound waits for people.

It can be accessed at any time.

The project, still led by the same trio involved in the original piece, continues to reflect Miracle’s interest in creating experiences where people can “question how they see and interact” with the everyday spaces around them.

One of Miracle’s pieces earlier this year was “Mammal Hall,” a short film that took the viewer through the titular hall in the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History to evoke questions about space and museum-going.

Roshandel, Miracle and Willis tapped local creatives for “The Parking Spaces,” assigning them each a parking space to fill with their words, music and thoughts, including the Iowa City improvisation-based trio Wombat.

Assigned to space eight, the Tower Place parking ramp, listeners are treated to a nearly 12-minute track of dissonant sounds that occasionally resemble the strums of a guitar and a saxophone, among other noises.

Justin Comer, a member of Wombat, said he has visited that parking ramp many times. In 2019, the trio held a show there.

Carlos Cotallo Solares and Will Yager, members of Wombat who now live on the East Coast, returned for a show booked in Iowa City not long after they all agreed to contribute to the project. They took a piece performed at Trumpet Blossom Café and used it for “The Parking Spaces.”

The band improvises everything, so it’s already time-specific and site-specific, Comer said.

Wombat’s contribution transforms a “functional space” into a site people can ruminate over.

“There’s a lot to look at (in the Tower Place parking ramp), but most of the time we’re just passing through, like we have to pay for parking (and) we’re probably resentful of that,” Comer said. “Maybe we’re going to work or something, (we) just want to get away from it as fast as possible.”

Miracle said one of her interests as an artist is working toward greater accessibility.

“The pandemic really forced me to consider some of these questions and look at who was being excluded as an audience because it wouldn’t be translatable,” she said.

The first iteration of this project was informed by Miracle’s questions about how she could make a dance performance that people could experience amid social distancing orders and performance venue closures. She questioned how her work could be translated into another medium.

“With that came some other larger questions around disability, access and ways to build into the project some consciousness around who’s included and who’s excluded, or where there are barriers,” she said.

The results include a decision for “The Parking Spaces” website to be alt-text friendly, which describes images in case it cannot be viewed. The Iowa City Public Library and Public Space One will provide people a preloaded mp3 player and headphones alongside a printed map for those who don’t have a smartphone or can’t stream off their device but still want to experience the audio installation.

Roshandel, composer for the first version of the project, had to piece all the narrations and poems together with the field recordings he did for some of the spots or the music that was contributed.

He told the Press-Citizen in an email the experience was as if “all these individuals were sharing their most loving stories with me.”

Through this expanded project, Roshandel felt he “belonged” and was part of a small community, especially important to him because of his “alien” status in America, he said.

“A lot of the artists who contributed to this project have been here generations before I even was born. And being one of the curators of this project made me view this project as a means of bringing different voices together and making a dialogue, first of all, between all these artists, and secondly, between this project and the city itself,” Roshandel said.

One of those artists is Margee Miller, who recently retired after working at the University of Iowa Libraries for 23 years. She’s also taught German.

A longtime student of literature, Miller said she had always been an admirer of writers and met many of them when she was a student at UI years ago, thinking she too may dabble in poetry.

Miller’s poem for “The Parking Spaces,” recorded aloud and included in a downloadable transcription off the website, marks her first published poem.

The piece, set at the Iowa City Senior Center, captures the building that Miller first knew when she arrived at the university as the post office.

“I thought a little bit about what Iowa City means to me,” Miller said, recalling how happy she was to study literature and attend readings and classes. “I feel honored and privileged to live in Iowa City.”

Miller’s piece reflects not only her past with the building, but the thoughts she had when she sat on the bench outside and took in her surroundings, including the changing landscape of Iowa City.

As for the listeners of “The Parking Spaces,” Miller believes they’ll walk away with an understanding of the diverse set of people doing creative things in the community.

“I hope that it will make everybody feel that they belong in Iowa City,” she said.

Download our apps today for all of our latest coverage.

Get the latest news and weather delivered straight to your inbox.