Brian Haw and the Fight for Public Space

Brian Haw (middle) with Peter Walsh (left) and Zuky Serper (right) at Parliament Square, London, November 2, 2004. Photo: Susan Kelly.

Peace to Brian Haw (1949-2011).

Coming up out of the tube into London’s bright mid-day sun, I wheeled my election cart up into Parliament Square, Big Ben’s Clock Tower looming over me as I struggled to get my bearings. Immediately I was welcomed politely to a patch of park sidewalk across the street from Parliament by a scruffy, sharp-minded man in a winter coat and a cap covered with political buttons like the hull of a ship is encrusted by barnacles. It was November 2, 2004, Election Day in the U.S. presidential election, and Brian Haw had already been on site for three years. Brian, armed with a cheap bullhorn and a forest of hand-lettered signs, was a one-person campaign against the Iraq War. He kindly gave me tips on the lay of the land as I set up a voting booth for Plebiscite2004, ostensibly an art project, that I had been running for about a month in the run-up to the election.

This post is not about that project or U.S. elections or the War in Iraq. Instead, I’d like to honor Brian as a defender of the right of ordinary people to make use of public spaces in vigorous, difficult and honorable ways, as opposed to notions of public spaces as being white-washed “neutral spaces” or “quiet zones” or even worse, public-private real estate to be sold off to the highest bidder.

Like the current and on-going court battle over artists’ rights to work and sell in New York City’s parks, Brian’s extended legal fight over his right to use a park sidewalk in London and to speak his views publicly gets at the heart of what we want democracy to be. For example, what does it mean that across the street from where Ai Wei Wei’s "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads" is now installed in front of Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has instituted a crack-down on artists’ ability to interact with the public. This is not meant to conflate the seriousness of Ai’s detention with the ability of a small group of artists to make a living, but rather to point out that the fight for public space and freedom of action is being played out across the world – in London as well as Beijing, in New York as well as Cairo.

It takes people like Brian Haw and Robert Lederman, the repeatedly arrested president of the New York City based street artists’ group A.R.T.I.S.T., being willing to fight on the street and in the courts to be able to keep the “public” in public space.

Every art action on the street entails a negotiation over the right to be there. On that day in London in 2004, Brain Haw used his experience to help me defend my own right to be there as City of London police officers pressured me to move. Literally I was given a choice: be arrested if I stayed on one side of a crack in the sidewalk, or be fine if I moved to the other side (in this case, into the jurisdiction of the City of Westminster). Here in New York for the same political art project, I had to get the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) to intercede on my behalf in order to set up in front of the Unisphere in Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The street is the front line of the push between regular people and the authorities – no matter where you are.

For more on Brian’s life and times and his court battles, see these links:

Brian Haw, New York Times Obituary

Brian Haw, Wikipedia

Brian Haw, Al Jazeera Obituary

Public Space Battle in NYC Grows: City Actions Now Extend Beyond Artists to Include Musicians and Newspapers

As scorching summer temperatures hit Manhattan, sparring over what a person can do in New York City’s public parks has heated up too.

In May a panel of New York State Appeals Court judges allowed new park rules to go into effect, dramatically restricting where artists can work and sell in four busy city parks, pending the outcome of an artists’ lawsuit against the city’s Parks Department.

See:
“Panel Finds Vendor Restrictions Do Not Violate Free Speech Rights” New York Law Journal, May 18, 2011.
"Appeals Court Rules Against Artists in Dua v. City of New York Department of Parks Suit," Cental Park Portrait Exchange, May 18, 2011.


Meanwhile the Parks Department ordered it’s Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) officers to expand enforcement of restrictions beyond artist vendors to include musicians in newly created “Quiet Zones,” including near the crowded and popular Bethesda Fountain in the heart of Central Park.

See:
“Musicians chased from Central Park,” New York Post, May 28, 2011.
“Musician Crackdown At Central Park's Bethesda Fountain,” A Walk in the Park, May 29, 2011.
“No Radios by the Fountain, Please! Or Cellos!,” New York Times, June 5, 2011.


Concurrently, Robert Lederman, president of the street artists organization A.R.T.I.S.T and an artist/plaintiff in a second suit against the city, in federal court, reports that new depositions of PEP officials confirm that sellers of newspapers such as the New York Times, New York Post and the Daily News are now officially banned from selling from temporary stands in parks such as Union Square. Those news-sellers would be forced to compete for the same restricted locations used by artists.

See:
“Why Bloomberg is Evicting Newspaper Vendors From 4 NYC Parks,” Robert Lederman, June 8, 2011.
“Art vendors spots restricted at Union Square, High Line,” The Villager, Volume 81, Number 2: June 9 to 15, 2011.

NYC Begins Crackdown on Musicians in Central Park

The New York City Parks Department has begun a crack down against musicians performing at Central Park’s famed Bethesda Fountain, targeting a classical harpist, a father of nine singing spirituals and a double-bass player who loves Bach, according to the New York Post.

“Is this in preparation for a new 30 table bar/food concession the City is quietly planning to install five feet away?” asks the blog A Walk in the Park.

The news comes on the heels of a recent New York State appeals court decision that removed a temporary injunction protecting artists and other expressive matter vendors working in four Manhattan parks from new park rules limiting their right to work and sell in public parks.

According to the Post, “When asked about the music crackdown, a spokesman for the Central Park Conservancy, the cash-flush nonprofit that runs the park for the city, said: ‘The fountain is a place for quiet reflection.’”

The battle over public space in New York City will continue soon in federal court as artists take their case back to a courtroom in the United States District Court’s Southern District of New York.

5:55am: Sunday in the Park or Horse Race?

Artists waiting to race into Central Park's Wien Walk, 5:55am, Sunday, May 29, 2011

As the summer drawing season begins, the removal of a court-ordered restraining order blocking enforcement of new park rules is again forcing artists to fight for limited spaces in New York City's Central Park and three other Manhattan parks. This morning, with a 6:00am nod of the head from a Parks Department PEP officer, a dozen artists sprinted into Central Park's Wien Walk to secure locations. For video of the foot race shot last summer (July 2010), click here.

Then the waiting began again. The park goers and tourists who are these artists' dedicated fans and customers don't really begin arriving in any substantial numbers for about 5 hours. A long day gets longer with the new park rules.

Artists waiting for customers in Central Park's Wien Walk, 7:15am, Sunday, May 29, 2011.

Appeals Court Rules Against Artists in Dua v. City of New York Department of Parks Suit

A panel of judges from the Appellate Division, First Department of the New York State Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling by Justice Milton A. Tingling denying a preliminary injunction to the artist plaintiffs in the Dua v. City of New York Department of Parks suit. The unanimous decision vacates the current temporary restraining order blocking the implementation of a new set of Park Rules and is a setback for artists working in New York City's Public Parks.

The new rules will go into effect sometime this week, returning artists to the difficult circumstances experienced last summer between July 19, 2010, when the rules were first implemented and August 25, 2010, when Justice Martin Schoenfeld granted a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of those rules. Click here to see those Rules, (Then click to the right on the link: "Adoption of Rule Amendments and Maps Regarding Expressive Matter Vending [as published in the City Record on June 18, 2010 - PDF, 781 KB]").

In making their decision, the five judges ruled that the plaintiffs "failed to demonstrate 'a likelihood of success on the merits' of their challenge to the subject regulations, since they failed to show that the regulations violated their rights under the New York State Constitution." To read the decision, click here.

What next?

No word yet from the Dua artist plaintiffs, but we should know something soon.

Robert Lederman, President of the street artists' organization A.R.T.I.S.T., vowed today in an email blast to win his own suit in Federal Court against the City Parks Department, Lederman et al. v Parks Department. Mr. Lederman stated that that lawsuit "is proceeding according to schedule."

For an overview on the legal situation see this article in the New York Law Journal.

Or this article from A Walk in the Park.

Drawings Installed!: Incident No. 42

Installation of portrait drawings at the Incident Report Viewing Station in Hudson, New York.
Incident No.42 includes the Round Robin (stage left) & Kristopher Perry (stage right).  

The Portrait Drawing Round Robin in Hudson, New York was a big success with seven talented artists donating their time and skill to creating a large grid of 49 drawings. As always with the Round Robins, the artists worked fast and furiously to complete the project in a reasonable amount of time. Each drawing was done in 7 minutes flat! Do the math and you will see that we squeezed the session into a grueling two hours of speed drawing. The drawings are now installed in the Incident Report Viewing Station at 348 Warren Street in Hudson.

Special thanks to the seven participating artists for their wonderful drawings and for their intense focus and good humor during the session. Also a round of applause is due to the Hudson Opera House for their generosity in allowing us to use their workshop space, to Max Goldfarb for inviting us to do the Round Robin in Hudson and to Christopher Quirk and Judy Garvey for their assistance during the session.

Drawing Leveled: Portrait Exchange Round Robin In Hudson, New York

Artists evaluating a portrait drawing grid at a Round Robin at Sculpture Center in Queens, New York.

The structure of the Central Park Portrait Exchange limits the participating artists to individuals working in the park and artist Peter Walsh, the Exchange organizer. If you've been itching to participate in a portrait exchange yourself, now's your chance!

Artist Peter Walsh is organizing his fourth Portrait Drawing Round Robin on Easter weekend at Hudson, New York's Hudson Opera House at the invitation of Max Goldfarb of the Incident Report Viewing Station. Too far away? Don't worry, there will be more Round Robins coming up.

What's a "Portrait Drawing Round Robin" anyway and how does it work?

Participants get together for a few hours to create portrait drawings of each other and construct a wall sized portrait “matrix” of the completed drawings: portraits of the participants shown horizontally, portraits by them vertically.

Lots of things go on in this process and the completed grids are truly mesmerizing. The Round Robins create a unique kind of group portraiture that turns the traditional power relationships of portraiture on their head.

Portrait Drawing Round Robin
at Hudson Opera House
327 Warren Street, Hudson, NY
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011, 4:30pm - 6:30pm
518-822-1438
info@hudsonoperahouse.org

Click here for details on previous round robins.