On 9/11/2007, on the sixth year anniversary of 9/11, Julius and Ian (hereinafter we; with our dog, Oneida and fish, Coolidge) moved from Droyers Point by Route 440 to downtown Jersey City’s (JC) “Powerhouse Arts District”, in order to be a part of JC’s burgeoning arts scene.
In the ever-changing demographics and geography of urban landscapes, buildings, like people, come and go. So for those of us—artists, architects, conservationists and historians—who are privileged enough to have or are “paid” for their time in order to appreciate, remember and honor (through preservation) what the past can teach us about sustainability in an ever more (dis)connected and physically battered world, we must do all that we can to create.
Julius is an avid classical pianist. He is also very much into Filipino kundimans, a lost artform.
I, on the other hand, have been trying my hand on multimedia visual arts. Using leftover and discarded scraps such as cardboard, cement and cut stone from either the destruction of warehouses or construction of high-rises in the Powerhouse District, I have created pieces intended to uncover not only the City’s burgeoning rise skyward (which is most obvious and visible) but also its industrial and aboriginal past. The former, slowly and sadly being demolished to make way for more high-rises; the latter having been fully erased in the collective memory of present-day Jersey City save for Anglicized names like Hoboken for Hobocan or Harsimus Cove for Ahasimus.) (Source: William Nelson’s Personal Names of Indians of New Jersey: Being a List of Six Hundred and Fifty Such Names, Gleaned Mostly from Indian Deeds of the Seventeenth Century, The Paterson History Club: Paterson, N.J. (1904). (7,9); -Jersey City Public Library-Main Branch in 472 Jersey Avenue.)
To serve as a reminder that nothing can really be owned despite our hyper-commodified world, I have painted “Aressick” and “Ahasimus” (Native-aboriginal names for Jersey City) in text form on the scraps that I have found throughout the area. The first set of work are painted pieces of rocks and cement, which serve as memorials/tombstones/markers of our aboriginal ancestors and what used to be their territory. These are and have been on public display, at the corner of 140 Bay St. and Provost St., in part, active resistance to the treatment of art as a commodity instead of art for the people, the “lenapeeps” . (More on lenapeeps soon…) Attached is a photo of the ongoing installation: the first rock placed 7 days after J&I moved in on 9/11/07 ; the second installation, made of cement, 7 days thereafter. The decision to move into this area on the 6th anniversary of 9/11 is to advance the grass roots movement towards an end to war. To honor these discarded items from the (con)destruction sites, these remnants of history serve as my canvass. -Ian Hinonangan (9.30.07)
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