re MATERIAL: Dialectical Histories	Michael Wilson
Circulation project (2000) Gregory Sholette. Image for postcard with adhesive backing for altering individual transit cards.

Histories didn't just exist or emerge by magic; they are produced, reproduced and contested.

Lisa Maya Knauer, REPOhistory

 

REPOhistory (the name was salvaged from 1984 cult movie Repo Man) was established in 1989 by a group of Manhattan artists, writers and teachers who were interested in the relationship of history to contemporary society. Initially formulated as a study group dedicated to excavating the multifarious narratives buried around their home city, their organisation rapidly developed into a forum for developing site-responsive public art projects. These projects generally exhibited a significant element of social commentary and an enthusiasm for re-examining history in the light of contemporary cultural politics. Citing a legacy stretching back to Dada and Russian Constructivism, and pursued more recently by groups like Grand Fury and Group Material, REPOhistory were committed to the importance of working within specific communities as the facilitators of an enriched understanding of the past and its influence on the present.

REPOhistory's work was based on the possibility of remapping the urban landscape of New York City through an interventionist art practice. They formulated a critical position towards the dominant style of Postmodern pastiche, which they regarded as 'depthless and detached' and undertook to steer clear of ironic appropriation. They aimed instead to make use of public records and personal histories to reveal forgotten stories and interrogate received ideas. They also had a particular interest in uncovering the ways in which architectural space represents the intersection of memory, function and power. Originally convinced of the belief that only 'guerrilla' actions could ever constitute an effective Multiculturalist critique, they went on to stage a number of officially-sanctioned, state-funded events. The support they received often came as a surprise to them. Always a loose-knit and continually changing group, REPOhistory ceased their activities as a collective in 2000, though they continue to work on compiling and editing documentation of the past decade's activities for an archive, to be housed in the library of New York University.

REPOhistory's inaugural work was the Lower Manhattan Sign Project, 1992, a parade and series of walking tours organised to coincide with the opening ceremonies of the celebrations surrounding the quincentennial of Columbus's 'discovery' of the Americas. More then forty artists and activists took part, constructing thirty-nine silk-screened metal signs that displayed a variety of images and texts. These articulated an alternative account of the Columbus's legacy based on reworked accounts of the origins of selected local sites. Among these 'unknown' histories were both the sites of the city's first slave market, and of an alleged slave rebellion against the Dutch in 1741. Also in 1992, the installation Choice Histories: Framing Abortion, displayed within the group exhibition A New World Order at Artist's Space, addressed the history of women's global struggle for reproductive rights.

	Lower Manhattan Sign Project (1992) Josely Carvalho and Debra Mesa-Paley. Street sign about early 20th century NYC feminist/abolitionist Frances Wright.
	Queer Spaces (1994) street signs commemorating places of importance to the Gay and Lesbian community were photosilkscreen text on triangular piece of pink press-board.

In 1994, REPOhistory contributed to the Storefront for Art and Architecture's exhibition Queer Spaces. A series of triangular pink signs were placed at gathering points for the gay and lesbian communities in New York City, giving information about the political histories of each site. The work was timed in order to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

Entering ButterMilk Bottom, 1995-96, paid tribute to an African American community in Atlanta bulldozed in the 1960s in order to facilitate the onward march of 'urban renewal'. REPOhistory again used signs, in addition to street markings and a pavilion, to illustrate the area's history, and to initiate a regular reunion of its former residents. In 1997 and 1998, they worked on a second phase of the project titled Voices of Renewal. This took the form of a collaboration between artist Tom Klem and residents of Atlanta's Fourth Ward's Glen Iris district, and led to the permanent installation of six celebratory 'public history markers'.

Out from Under the King George Hotel was commissioned for Houston, Texas in 1997. Selecting the abandoned hotel of the title for its proximity to both a homeless shelter, and to the site of a proposed new baseball stadium, REPOhistory published an informational poster. This was distributed throughout the city and, with the permission of the Non-Profit Housing Corporation of Greater Houston, an organisation that was renovating the structure as a halfway house for homeless, pasted onto the building itself. The Corporation used the document for fund raising and later hung a framed copy of the document in the lobby of the renovated King George.

In collaboration with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, a non-profit legal advocacy group, REPOhistory produced Civil Disturbances: Battles for Justice in New York City,1998-99. The aim of this project was to raise awareness about the social impact of public interest law, and to focus attention on cases that extended and protected the rights of politically or economically disenfranchised citizens. Twenty artist-designed street signs represented, according to group co-founder Mark O'Brien, "cases that have shaped the fabric of life in New York City as much as the streets on which we walk and the buildings in which we live and work."

Civil Disturbances: Battles for Justice in New York City (1998-99) New York Post article showing New York City police removing Marina Gutierrez's sign. Despite city permits local politicians removed Gutierrez's sign on three different occasions.	Lower Manhattan Street Sign Project (1992) Mark O'Brien and Willie Birch. Street sign detailing "The Great Negro Uprising" in Old Amsterdam of 1741 and police activity in African American neighborhoods of NYC in 1992.

Among the contentious issues publicly marked by Civil Disturbances were police brutality, the legal fight to save various public hospitals, and a class action suit brought against the Rudolph Giuliani mayoral administration in defence of abused children. Perhaps not surprisingly, the project marked the first occasion on which REPOhistory encountered significant opposition to their activities. The intervention of law firm Debevoise & Plimpton was required in order to obtain a vital permit, and, once the project was finally installed, several signs disappeared from public view. It eventually transpired that works including Janet Koenig's documentation of the Empire State Building's prolonged non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Marina Gutierrez's critique of housing discrimination by the city against Puerto Rican families in her Brooklyn neighbourhood, had been removed by building managers and local politicians. "In the wake of these sidewalk struggles," writes founder member Gregory Sholette, "it became clear that the concept of public space as a democratically accessible medium for social discourse remains a politically abrasive one, especially to people and institutions with the power to prohibit that access."(1)

REPOhistory Choice Histories, Artist's Space NYC, 1992. A collaborative installation about the history of abortion, sterilization abuse and women's control of their sexuality. (this show included the work of the late Michael Richards who died in his studio in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11th, 2001.)

Sholette's perception of Civil Disturbances as marking a shift of emphasis in REPOhistory's practice away from the 'marking' of sites and towards the 'mobilisation of space' is borne out in the group's final project. In 2000, REPOhistory looked to the World Wide Web as a way of distributing information, posing questions, and involving more diverse audiences. Circulation became an ongoing exploration of the city as body, employing blood as a complex and potent metaphor for health and disease, fraternity and segregation, violence and control . It focused on basic systems such as public transportation and water works, as well as on the city's shifting incomes and housing situations, revealing the ways in which these could shape both physical topography and semiotic interpretation. It also drew attention to the daily processing and distribution of human blood products from donors to bloodbanks, hospitals, and clinics, compellingly described by Sholette as "an invisible meta-circulatory system in the city." (2)

Circulation consisted of three interrelated parts. Firstly, a series of postcards, magnets, stickers and other small artefacts were distributed through the mail and in subway trains, galleries, health care facilities and needle-exchange programs. A debate sparked off by these objects was conducted via the group's newly-established website ( http://www.repohistory.org/ ). Secondly, a number of artists created interactive digital works, also housed on the site. These projects included Carola Burroughs's compendium of terms for 'miscegenated' people, Miguelangel Ruiz and Leela Ramotar's transformation of the image of a human heart into a racial battlefield, and Russet Lederman's Congestion, an investigation of urban circulation, both human and vehicular. Finally, with the help of funding from the New York State Council for the Arts, Circulation incorporated an extensive educational element. A number of schools were invited to take blood as a theme for their own projects, and several posted the results online. These include the Institute for Collaborative Education, who produced an e-zine titled The

Bleeding Edge ( http://www.thebleedingedge.org ); the City-as-School High School, who conducted a series of interviews on video with organisations including the National Haemophilia Foundation, the Bronx-Harlem Needle Exchange and the New York Blood Centre, and St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, who took the question "What has race got to do with circulation?" as a starting-point for visual work ( http://www.stcloudstate.edu/~art/students/ods/circ/circ.html ). REPOhistory artists Jim Costanzo and Cynthia Liesenfeld saw the website as the project's

digital 'heart'; a kind of information pump. For the time being at least, it is a heart that continues to beat, even as the people who made it disperse to pursue other projects.

REPOhistory Circulation project (2000) Jante Koenig. Circulation project map on the window of Printed Matter artist's bookstore in NYC in February of 2000.

One model among many of a contemporary activist practice, REPOhistory demonstrated that public art with overt political content need not be pedantic. In taking a radical approach to history, positioning it as a tool for continually reassessing the current perception of specific sites, it attempted to challenge the omnipotence of cultural and governmental institutions in a flexible and inclusive manner. But the group themselves acknowledged that their notion of an 'engaged' cultural strategy was as fluid as the wider world that it sought to confront and involve. As Sholette writes, "the complexity, or better yet the overdetermination, of both cultural and political activity can never be collapsed into a mechanical notion of effectiveness." (3)

As REPOhistory moves from being an active unit into a set of documents, images, accounts and responses, it retains the potential power to inspire further efforts, but its custodians would be well advised to take seriously the experiences of others who have followed a similar path. One group from the early 80s, Political Art Documentation and Distribution, or PAD/D, for example, sought to create their own archive, documenting and redistributing the activities of artists and art groups with an interest in social or political change. That archive is now in the library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, but while used by art historians, it has failed to become the practical organising tool envisioned by its founders. REPOhistory has always struggled against becoming the kind of institution that Cesare Pietroiusti of collectives Nomads + Residents ( http://www.nomadsresidents.org Ô and Oreste ( http://www.undo.net/oreste , describes as 'self-confirming' - existing to legitimate, historicise and celebrate and secure its own achievements rather than facilitate genuinely critical activity (however that may be defined at any given place and time).(4) The story of REPOhistory is, by its very nature, never a closed book.

1. Gregory Sholette (1999) 'Authenticity Squared: REPOhistory: The Anatomy of an Activist Urban Art Project' in New Art Examiner , 28:11 ( http://www.newartexaminer.org/archive/1199_authenticity.html )
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. Transcribed conference call between Cesare Pietroiusti, Gregory Sholette, and Brett Bloom, Groups and Spaces e-zine No. 1, July 2001 ( http://www.groupsandspaces.net/e_zine1.html )

Michael Wilson is an artist and writer based in New York .