Clearing The Air - Julio Morales - David Goldberg - Michelle Baughan - Unique Holland - Suzanne Lacy

Afterimage, July, 2001 by Megan Wilson

Code 33

by Suzanne Lacy, Julio Morales, Unique

Holland, David Goldberg, Michelle Baughan,

Raul Cabra and Patrick Toebe

Intersection of the Arts

San Francisco, California

May 2-June 16, 2001

In 1998 a group of artists and activists led by Suzanne Lacy and T.E.A.M. (Teens Education Art Media) initiated a project with youth and police in Oakland, California to clear the air and open up dialogue between the two disparate groups. Over a two-year period "Code 33" came to be the term for an ambitious, large-scale collaboration whose participants included 150 youth, the Oakland Police Department, the Oakland Mayor's Office, the Community Probation Program of Alameda County, Oakland Sharing the Vision (a neighborhood revitalization task force), California College of Arts and Crafts, the Alameda County Office of Education and the Oakland Museum.

Most recently, the project was presented as an installation by Lacy and "Code 33" collaborators Julio Morales, Unique Holland, David Goldberg, Michelle Baughan, Raul Cabra and Patrick Toebe at Intersection for the Arts in the Mission District of San Francisco. To understand the implications of the exhibit as "another platform to address immediate social issues and to build community through the experiential, experimental art process" it is important to know the circumstances and the event from which this installation grew. [1]

"Code 33" is a police term for "emergency, clear the air." Depending on the source, the interpretation has ranged from addressing a volatile situation in the name of public safety to creating a cultural environment of racial profiling and stereotyping that has marked young people as targets of public scrutiny and legislative punishment. In Oakland one quarter of the residents are youths. One of the predominant fears among this population is of the police, and not without good reason. The arrest rate for Oakland's kids and young adults has grown by 35% over the last 10 years, and in March of 2000 California passed Proposition 21. This measure increases the number of youths tried in adult court, disables the prudence of judges and corrections professionals to determine appropriate interventions and allows youths to be liable for crimes committed by others if they are deemed gang members (defined as an informal group of three or more people).

"Code 33" was initially manifested as a highly produced pop performance spectacle with 150 youth participants and 100 police officers that took place on October 7, 1999 on the rooftop of a parking garage. An audience of roughly 1000 community members looked on and listened in as youths and police engaged in a dialogue exploring the realities and stereotypes experienced and perceived by both.

A buzz could already be felt at Oakland's 19th Street BART station. Five floors up atop the roof, the sun was just starting to set, casting a golden halo over downtown Oakland. Groups of kids were huddled together outside, talking feverishly and looking up periodically to greet the arrival of friends. A battalion of nearly 50 black, red and white cars and trucks with headlights ablaze lined the lot, creating a dramatic display. Twenty-eight video monitors bordered the cement edges of the rooftop with intimate portraits of residents from Oakland's diverse neighborhoods filling the screens. In the center, on 29 slightly elevated platforms, sat circles of six to eight people--two or three uniformed cops and four to six youths clad in red "Code 33" t-shirts. Sound and camera crews documented the interactions; spectators hovered around, voyeuristically drifting between the groups. The exchanges ranged in levels of intensity, but overall the interactions appeared to be a productive introduction to addressing each other's concerns. The mood was fairly still yet somehow anxious. After an hour of discourse, hip hop music blared into the space. Moments later, a helicopter's revolving blades were heard, its blinding spotlight pouring over the crowd, eventually landing on the fourth-floor terrace where a troupe of teens were performing a lively dance routine. The evening wrapped up with a community response segment. Mini-stages of grassy knolls surrounded by white picket fences were filled with groups of neighborhood residents discussing the evening's impact and future steps toward integrating the experience into subsequent action.

More striking than the conversations or any notion of community building, however, was the theatrical display with its incredibly detailed and contrived choreography--the roles, the uniforms, the colors, the music, the helicopter, the synchronized dance, the Leave It To Beaver landscape of the final act, etc. Steven Bochco's critically-shamed follow up to Hillstreet Blues--Cop Rock--came to mind, and I couldn't help but wonder if the officers were going to break into a ballad. I was surprised that one of the posters promoting the event had the tag "Yol this ain't no MTV rap" because it could easily have been mistaken for a music video production. In retrospect it could also be seen as an early prototype for the current reality show craze: Real cops, real kids--can they see eye-to-eye? You vote. Yet this interplay between fact and fiction is where this breed of interactive community art becomes the most intriguing, as well as confounding.