For information on Dashboard Co-op, go to dashboardco-op.org.
To most of us, the idea of being holed up in an empty building in downtown Atlanta for three weeks with a total stranger — with no phone, no internet and minimal contact with the outside world — sounds like a nightmare. But for two artists who were placed in just those circumstances by an inventive arts organization, the experience proved to be the perfect opportunity to get creative.
Dashboard Co-op’s recent project, “No Vacancy,” challenged two Atlanta artists to live in an abandoned building while working together to come up with something to show the outside world at the end of their stay.
“When we came in, it was really derelict,” says Ben Coleman, an Atlanta-based performance artist, who moved into the building at 91 Broad St. N.W. on June 29 for a three-week stay along with Henry Detweiler, a painter he hadn’t met before. There are few businesses or residents in the eerily quiet, neglected urban neighborhood just two blocks south of the Five Points MARTA Station. The building, built in the early 20th century, was originally a furniture store, but in the mid-‘90s it became a series of nightclubs. Though they had big ideas for their show, Coleman and Detweiler spent their first few days just painting over obscenities scrawled on the walls and sweeping up cigarette butts and broken glass from the floor.
That sort of setting might not seem to hold much potential for artistic inspiration, but Courtney Hammond and Beth Malone, the founders of Dashboard Co-op, insist that Atlanta’s neglected buildings are something special. One key to revitalizing seemingly hopeless blocks in the city’s urban areas, they contend, is to bring in artists. Artists need space, and the spaces need life. So the empty building on Broad Street seemed an ideal match for their goal to help revitalize overlooked areas of the city through art.
“Downtown has so much potential,” says Hammond. “It feels like we could have an impact there, that the things we do will have a ripple effect.”
“When we bring 300 or 500 people through the door for an opening,” says Malone, “it’s bringing people downtown who probably haven’t been there in a really long time. Giving people that encouragement and inviting them there, I hope that brings them back.”
Two years ago, the then-fledgling Dashboard Co-op produced an event called “Ground Floor,” inviting artists to create installations in long-vacant storefronts on Edgewood Avenue east of Boulevard. The project drew hundreds of visitors. Since then, the vacant spaces they used have been leased, and they believe “Ground Floor” helped transform the area, which is home to The Sound Table, Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room & Ping Pong Emporium and Noni’s Bar and Deli. Although Hammond and Malone originally created Dashboard merely to provide professional development and promotional support for artists, after the success of “Ground Floor,” their focus shifted.
“We changed our mission statement within a day,” says Hammond. The group’s subsequent large-scale event, 2012’s “Boom City,” exhibited work from Dashboard’s stable of artists and showcased the M. Rich Building on M.L.K. Drive downtown.
“It’s filling a need,” says Malone. “We just had to find the language for what we were doing.”
Hammond works as the project supervisor in the public art division of Atlanta’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and Malone is the coordinator of teen programs at the High Museum of Art. The two met while studying at Georgia State University and eventually founded Dashboard Co-op in 2010. They settled on the name because it seemed to have the right combination of homey familiarity and adventurous forward-looking movement. The women also share the habit of taking their shoes off and placing their bare feet on the dashboard when riding in a car, which made the name fitting.
In November, Dashboard received a prestigious Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Seed Grant for $30,000. It is awarded through nomination, not application, so the news came to them via email out of the blue one day. “We thought it was spam,” says Hammond. Instead, it was “a game-changer,” says Malone. “It suddenly helped bring us to this new level in a matter of a moment. We’re reaching out to all these other cities and seed organizations that are start-ups like ours. It suddenly felt like all these relationships had been created so now we have a whole new pool of people to pull from that we’re really excited to work with in the future.”
Some of the grant money went to put on “No Vacancy,” and the two artists who participated in it said they certainly took inspiration from the experience. It was no retreat for them, though. They often put in 14-hour days cleaning up the space and preparing the show.
For the opening reception last month, Coleman and Detweiler created an immersive performance environment putting to use some of the items left behind by the former nightclub that inhabited the space. A giant pink zigzag pattern covered all the walls, ceilings, and floors, and sheets of silver and gold Mylar were draped around the space. Looking like nightclub impresarios in identical white suits, the artists danced and sang on stage to songs from the abandoned jukebox. Guests could shoot pool on a table on which all the balls had been painted pink to match the walls or wander upstairs where a sculpted rat-like monster sat in a DJ booth.
“I’m so proud of them,” says Malone of the two artists and their work. “I was so impressed with their level of engagement.”
“I’ve been pleasantly surprised,” says Detweiler looking back on the experience. “This is one of the few places in Atlanta that really feels like a city city. I didn’t know any of this was down here. I see a lot of potential for this block.”
“The range of new challenges we’ve come up with in doing this has been very empowering and liberating,” says Coleman. “It’s been magical. It’s been strange.”
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