Ghana ThinkTank at Queens Museum of Art

After a fantastic launch with Creative Time at the New Museum's Festival of Ideas for a New City, the Ghana ThinkTank's Mobile Unit will be operating out of the Queens Museum of Art all summer long, focusing on the problems of Corona, Queens.

The Ghana ThinkTank in Corona involves a custom-built teardrop trailer designed to journey into different locales in the "First" world, collecting community and personal issues, and sending them to think tanks in Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Serbia, Iran, Afghanistan, and others...

Once we receive the solutions, our trailer rolls back into the communities, this time as a mobile workstation, so that we can work with community members to apply the solutions we have received from our global network of think tanks.

The Ghana Think Tank operates in Corona May 21 - Aug 14.



Ghana ThinkTank in Corona is supported by the Queens Museum of Art, Creative Time, the Rockefeller Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, Black Rock Arts Foundation, and The Greenwall Foundation. Additional funding provided by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.

Ghana ThinkTank presented by CREATIVE TIME

The Ghana ThinkTank Mobile Unit was presented by CREATIVE TIME at the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City on May 7, 2011. Our mobile unit, a custom-built teardrop trailer, was built to journey into different communities in the “First” world, collecting community (and personal) issues and sending them to think tanks in Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Serbia, Iran, Afghanistan, and on…

Once we receive the solutions, our trailer rolls back into the communities, this time as a mobile workstation, so that we can implement their solutions, whether they strike us as brilliant or impractical…

Ghana Think Tank on Art 21 Blog

Ghana Think Tank interview on the Art21 Blog | http://blog.art21.org/2010/06/06/pardon-this-brief-commercial-interruption-ghana-think-tank/

Ghana Think Tank at Eyebeam

Eyebeam, in conjunction with Upgrade! NY, presents Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus.

Jun 10, 2010 - Aug 07, 2010
Eyebeam Atelier
540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011

From the Eyebeam press release: "With participation now a dominant paradigm, structuring business models, creative and activist practice, the architecture of the city, and the economy, we are all integrated into structures of participation whether we want to be or not. The exhibition will examine models of participation and participation as a model, presenting work that encourages subversive participation, intervenes into existing systems, or envisions new alternatives."

Shortlisted for the Cartier Award

The Ghana Think Tank has made the shortlist for the Frieze Foundation Cartier Award 2010.

wales actions video

I just uploaded a video of some of the actions, and some installation shots, from the Ghana Think Tank in Wales.

serbia's solutions

Here are the solutions to Cardiff's problems proposed by the think tank in Serbia:

Cardiff's Problems:

1. A large number of people have no concept of social interaction with
other passing strangers. They look through you, or worse at you like
you're something they've trodden in, with disgust and bitter
resentment.

2. There are too many empty shops on every street.

3. To many Liberals allowing immigrants to live and spunch of hard
working people kick them out.

4. The psychiatric system in Wales neglects its patients. The hospital
feels like a prison ‐ nobody ever invites patients to talk.

5. There seems to be a perception that older people are a burden to
society.

6. The pavements are very uneven which makes walking in high heels
very difficult.

Serbia's solutions:

1. The solution could be seminars on the subject ‘human relations’. You can use slogans like ‘ smile is not so hard thing to do’ or ‘its not so hard to be polite , giving flyers to people always with smile. You can also do short public performance related with the subject at the main squares .

2. Give the shops to the students who have creative and innovative ideas and who can make some own products and put them in the shops. Products should be interesting for the people and attract them, their attention. They can also try find more interesting way to sell them and make some money from which they can pay the (symbolic) rent.

3. Put the immigrants and domestic workers in the same working conditions. Find a same job for both immigrant and domestic workers, giving them the same things to do, the same salary, if its possible arrange that they spend most of the free time together

4. You can do several things here ; educate employees explaining to them the importance of conversation with patients with psychological disability, send psychiatrists who will try to find solutions for the problems or try to form a group( s) who will go once a week in the hospital(s) and talk with patients giving them small presents every time just to cheer them out.

5. Make public debate in which young people will give the flayers to all with the inscription 'I am old and you will be too'. Tell the people that they shouldn’t think only about the present but also about future. How will they react if they are in the same situation and other people think they are burden to society.

6.Put the sign on the payments like’ do not wear high heels on this pavement’ or make one side of the pavement (very even) in straight line which can be used by persons( women) with a high heels.

The Serbia Think Tank participants are: Ivica Mihajlovic, Kristina Maza, Jelena Antic, Dejan Trajkovic and Sandra Antanasijevic (and camera man Marija Djoric).

iran's solutions

Photos by Poolad Javaher Haghighi. More here.

Here are the solutions that the Iran think tank provided:

Solving the problems of Wales

"Sazmanab Project" think-tank

1. To solve the communication problem of the Welsh, we came up with a couple of solutions. The main issue all these resolutions point to is that we should find the basic common interests between people. This will be act as a strong foundation for all the resolutions we have to offer.

• We thought that the main reason why people are unable to communicate is their fear of being so much different from others. This led us to the idea of designing and making T-shirts all carrying the owners' smiling portraits. Imagine you're walking down the street, seeing a serious neighbor passing you by everyday. Everytime you see him/her you think to yourself "How on earth would I ever communicate with this frowny ol' face?" Now the next day, you see the same person wearing a T-shirt with his/her smiling face on it. This image will make it a lot easier for you to imagine the person in a casual easy mood. You'll definitely feel a lot more comfortable breaking the ice with him/her.


• As the second resolution, we thought of a little social game in which a small sign –a wristband or a small piece of body language- in one passenger invokes a certain social interaction in the other passenger. This could be a smile, a simple "Hi!" or such.

2. To encourage people to fill up the empty shops, we thought of the following solutions:

• Adding a little bonus feature to that certain shop. Imagine a shop selling clothes, which offers a unique little refreshment on the side. This will be like the old saying "Come for the clothes, stay for the lemonade".
  
• We also came up with a discount system that does not necessarily rely on purchase, but it relies on frequent visits of citizens. The system works like this: we create a chain of shops each offering a discount card on each visit. If you collect cards from Shop A, B, and C, you will get a discount in Shop D.
  

3. The question was very vague, so we could not offer any solutions.

4. The basic concept for the solutions in this section is to encourage the patients to express their inner thoughts. So we thought of:

• Putting up a blackboard in the hallway of the hospital which functions as a message board. On this board all the patients and staff can write what they want weather it's their present status or a sentence they like. Other patients and the staff will possibly reply to what the former person has written and then this will turn into a dialogue between the patients and the patients. The nurses will face the thoughts of their patients and possibly respond to them. This type of communication could also be made virtually through Twitter.


• A group of artists can talk to the patients about different matters whether public or personal and then create a piece of art using the views of different patients mixed with their owns. The art form (whatever the media is) can be presented to the staff and other patients and possibly out of the hospital.

5. What connects people with the elderly is to understand that they were once young and did what the young generation do or maybe worse. So we could invite a group of elderly to write their memories of the past , focusing on their sexual memories. We call it "Funny Dirty Memories" and this could be shared with others through the internet and on a web log.

6.

• We could create a red carpet path at some pavements with a "High Heels Only" sign at it in intervals.


• We could also put up some "No High Heels Passing" signs at very uneven pavements.
  

Anita Esfandiari, Bijan Moosavi, Makan Ashkwari, Mani Nilchiani, Sohrab M. Kashani and Tara Fatehi Irani from Tehran, Iran.

Photo documentation of the project was done by Poolad Javaher Haghighi.

Sazmanab Project / September 2009
www.sazmanab.com

iran think tank

Photographs by Poolad Javaher Haghighi. More here.

Greetings to our think tank from Iran!

Our Iran think tank is the Sazmanab Project composed of Anita Esfandiari, Bijan Moosavi, Makan Ashkwari, Mani Nilchiani, Sohrab M. Kashani and Tara Fatehi Irani from Tehran, Iran.

"Sazmanab Project is an independent art space based in Tehran, Iran. This artist-run space is founded by the artist, Sohrab M. Kashani with the aim of creating a productive environment for young and talented art enthusiasts, helping them realize their ideas and projects in the proper space with the necessary tools. Sazmanab Project is basically a studio that conducts various artistic projects – both local and international - along with a show room that has the capacity to provide artists with the opportunity of hosting their own shows, holding workshops, performances and such. Sazmanab seeks to create an interdisciplinary collaboration between the new generations of artists."
-via Sazmanab Project's Facebook group

You can see Sazmanab Project's photos at their flickr account, and follow their tweets here. You can also see the photos taken by Poolad Javaher Haghighi of their September 2009 deliberations about the problems of Cardiff.



Most of our Ffotogallery install revolves around the solutions provided by Iran. You'll see photos of that once we're in Wales and actually have a chance to install it, but I can tell you it will involve columns of hanging t-shirts sporting the smiling faces of Cardiff, a reception/ t-shirt collection evening, teddy bears loaded with the funny naughty stories of Cardiff's elderly community, and brightly colored panels scratched with comments from people living in health institutions. There may even be a video "chandelier."

wales' problems

We will soon be traveling to Wales for shows at the National Museum of Wales, Ffotogallery, and the May You Live in Interesting Times festival, where we will be putting into action the solutions we've received from our think tanks. We sent problems collected in Wales to think tanks in Ghana, Mexico, Serbia, Iran, and a group of incarcerated girls in the Massachusetts penal system.

We received several dozen problems from Wales, and these are the six problems we settled on for the think tanks to solve:

HELP US SOLVE THESE WALES PROBLEMS
1. A large number of people have no concept of social interaction with other passing strangers. They look through you, or worse at you like you're something they've trodden in, with disgust and bitter resentment.

2. There are too many empty shops on every street.

3. To many Liberals allowing immigrants to live and spunch of hard working people kick them out.

4. The psychiatric system in Wales neglects its patients. The hospital feels like a prison ‐ nobody ever invites patients to talk.

5. There seems to be a perception that older people are a burden to society.

6. The pavements are very uneven which makes walking in high heels very difficult.