This month, an itinerant curatorial project by San Francisco-based artists Sarah Hotchkiss and Carey Lin called Stairwell’s will be in town for Wave Pool’s Art Space is Your Space artist residency program. The duo has been using stairs as sites for art experiences since 2011, and their two-week residency will include three group walking tours, or “Field Trips,” a small open-house presentation and information session July 23 and an exhibition that will remain on view in Wave Pool’s gallery in Camp Washington throughout most of August.
Cincinnati has plenty of flights of stairs for Hotchkiss and Lin to choose from (a reputed 400-plus staircases are still owned by the city), as stairs have long played a central role in the development of many of our hilly neighborhoods.
Before cars or even inclines were enabling workers to commute up and down many of the steep hills of Mount Adams or Price Hill, neighborhoods were shaped around networks of pedestrian accessibility. Once a hallmark of community, intimate familiarity with the walking paths of one’s town became increasingly devalued during the Cold War era, particularly in areas that were being fractured by highway construction, erosion and a loss of population to the suburbs. Many of Cincinnati’s steps became underused and therefore shoddily maintained, if not cut off altogether.
But with the reestablished interest in living within the urban core, many of the steps of Cincinnati are being redone and remapped, so Stairwell’s will have plenty of sites to explore.
Hotchkiss and Lin plan on getting down to brass tacks when they arrive in town mid-July, using Mary Anna Dusablon’s 1998 book, Walking the Steps of Cincinnati, which was updated just last year to include clearer maps that reflect current information. Strolling along the author’s suggested routes, the artists intend to chat with residents and business owners they encounter along the way to create a one-of-a-kind experience for tour attendees.
But what does stair walking have to do with art? If observation is the most basic implied activity behind any art experience, then walking provides viewers with a constantly changing environment. And ascending (or descending) staircases can provide vantages on the world around us in ways that only art attempts to affect us.
“We feel that stairs are an important platform for site-specific art making and viewing because they represent an ‘in-between’ or transitional space,” the artists say via email.
In other words, “paper roads” (as many staircases are known because they exist on paper maps but were never fully developed), used as sites for art making and viewing, can create layers of meaning for audiences that are accustomed to consuming art within comparatively traditional locations such as galleries.
In past Field Trips, Hotchkiss and Lin have traced secret pathways between homes, tested the resonance of an interior stairwell with singing exercises led by an a cappella group, learned about the history of escalators while riding them and played kazoos on buses.
Neither of the two artists have been to Cincinnati before, and Lin divulges that, because they’re still in the process of working out routes to include on the trips, she and her collaborator are “excited to explore different neighborhoods and talk to anyone who wants to share their stair-related experiences.”
To that aim, Stairwell’s has also connected with the local nonprofit Spring in our Steps, whose mission is to enhance community connections by reclaiming alleys, sidewalks and steps in Cincinnati on behalf of pedestrians.
The exhibition portion of the residency will include documentation from a recent Stairwell’s Field Trip in North Berkeley, Calif., research documents, notes, prototypes, as well as materials they will generate over the course of planning their Cincinnati Field Trip. They’re still in the preparation phase but Lin says they hope to meet with other artists and “stair enthusiasts” when they arrive.
“Our goal is for attendees to be engaged participants rather than observers, who are discovering or rediscovering a specific place with us, all while climbing stairs,” Lin says.
And if city stairs hold an undeniable history as a barometer of human locality, here’s to hoping that audiences’ participation in Stairwell’s upcoming Wave Pool residency will reflect the city’s increasing engagement in art.
STAIRWELL’S will be in town July 18-Aug. 1, and the duo’s exhibit at WAVE POOL will be on display through August. More info: wavepoolgallery.org.
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2015.