The Heidelberg Project is, by all accounts, unbelievable, and it's 24 years in the making—and keeping on. Here's how DP describes it all (photos by DP, more on the jump, and even more here.)
I forget which friend told me about the Heidelberg Project, but I decided to go by once I got into Detroit, because I got there hours before I thought I would. As I was driving up, it was just typical Detroit, meaning some abandoned buildings right in the middle of otherwise populated neighborhoods. I pulled up to Heidelberg Street, and made the left, and the whole street was just an explosion of color.I got out of the car and didn't really know where to start. Walked by a house covered in...stuff, and a homeless guy asked me for money. I told him I'd get him before I left. He asked if it was my first time there, then told me the artist would be by in a few. I then left him there and walked around for a bit.
When I came back to him, Tyree was there. He was just walking around at that point. I walked up and started asking him questions about the project. He was an incredibly nice guy, almost all smiles, and he didn't blow me off—I was worried I'd be just some annoying tourist to him. But while he said hellos to everyone and gave them pamphlets as they walked through, he kept coming back and talking to me.
At some point I mentioned that I came to Detroit every year for the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and the whole thing really resonated with me when he was telling me about the artists that have come through and supported the project (Derrick May, Carl Craig) and how he used to listen to the Electrifying Mojo on the radio (the guy who jumpstarted techno).
I felt silly asking him, but after 24 years, I asked him if this would ever be "done." In what was ultimately a theme for the day, he described the Project as being an expression of life—"and is life ever done?"Looking around, it was all a bit overwhelming. There's just so much to it all, and he described how he got started. The polka-dotted house is where he grew up. That whole neighborhood went downhill with drug traffic, and he decided to change it up. So he went up to the drug dealers in the park and said he was going to start doing art there, asking if they would have any problem with that.
They said no. As soon as he started doing art, they stopped dealing in the park. Instead, they began calling him the "Voodoo Man" once he started painting crosses on the sidewalk.
So we talked for a few there, then he asked me what I was doing for the day. I told him nothing and he said I should come with him, that he wanted to show me something. So Tyree gathered up his assistant (the homeless guy on the porch - his name was Ellis), they jumped in his truck and I followed them over to a street a few minutes away.We pulled up at the corner and there was a building with a dot on it across the street. Tyree's latest project is to put dots up all around the city in his own propaganda campaign (of sorts). Using art to take people out of their element.
He said he's been working his way down the street painting these dots. It's all part of his dissertation. He's got an honorary doctorate but he wants to do a dissertation on "What is Art Today?" So...dots. (The dots are because his grandpa liked jellybeans.) Ellis climbed up on a ladder and painted a dot on an unused billboard.
As Ellis was finishing up a van drove by with a politician trying to get out the vote. As the car pulled up Tyree started to question the guy, asking him what set him apart from everyone else. It wasn't angry or anything, but it was still very stern and direct. The politician stammered out an answer about not being a career politician but eventually just gave up.
Tyree turned to me and said he's heard all of those promises before. The problem is just so big, and all of these politicians roll through promising easy answers, when that just isn't going to happen. "Keeping money in the community" doesn't mean anything when the community doesn't have any money (the candidate's position was trying to claim federal tax amnesty for Detroit). One thing is for certain, Tyree's got nothin' but love for Detroit.
Tyree told me about getting arrested. He was out painting dots and the cops pulled up asking if he had permission. He answered that he gave himself permission, and well, got arrested. Turned into a big thing apparently, but it all worked out.
Next, Tyree took me to an abandoned school and him and Ellis walked around painting in various spots. Later that day Tyree had a meeting with the city, as he's trying to convince them to give him the building to use for his dissertation (not that they're stopping anyone from doing whatever they want anyway).
I walked around a bit, marveling not so much that the building was abandoned, but how much stuff was still around. It's like they just didn't come back one day. Crazy. As we walked around, there were some other people in the building stripping out the pipes (from the looks of their van, it didn't look like they had permission from the city either).So at this point I'm pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing, feeling incredibly lucky that Tyree is answering any question I've got and telling me story after story about the Project. Head back to the Project and I plan to just look around a bit more before taking off. Some dudes show up and they're artists from London who came out just for this (one of the guys does similar work on abandoned buildings). They were all a bit more gushing with their praise, and obviously touched, even more so when Tyree insists that they leave a dot of their own anywhere they want. And here's where the world gets small.
So I'm telling one of the artists that I'm from Seattle and another guy yells "I knew it!" Turns out he was here doing visuals during the Decibel Festival, and recognized me from one of the shows. Small world. Tyree of course took it in stride, saying he wasn't surprised. It's just life and art, bringing people together.We all left our dots on the Project, then headed off to get lunch (me and the London guys—Tyree stuck around to work). Then I went to the wedding I was actually in town for. No offense to my now-married friend, but it affected me far less.
