Which Parasite?

Parasite Parking was presented in conjunction with RAISIN, an exhibition curated by Asha Iman Veal at 6018North, an experimental art space within a former mansion in Chicago. RAISIN presented local and global perspectives on themes of home and struggles against injustice, drawing from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a 1959 play that has been produced across the world. The exhibition was also a partner project of the 4th Chicago Architecture Biennial, which, under the title The Available City, provided a framework for a community-led design approach to identify new forms of shared, collective space in urban areas.

A few weeks after the opening of RAISIN, two pallets and two artists – the parasites – arrived at 6018North. Over the course of the next week, they moved throughout the city with a car-sized, multifunctional platform made of wood, mirror, and concrete – a parasite disguised as a parking spot. Popping up in spaces for cars, and unfolding into a shared table, stage, and home, the mobile space became a site of wonderment. Parasite Parking initiated intimate encounters among strangers that sparked relationships and speculation about old ideas and new possibilities.

For French philosopher Michel Serres, a parasite exists in the interstices between private and public, individual and collective. As it moves and messages in between these spheres, the parasite can encourage innovation and change through disruption or exchange. Consequently, a parasite can create or loosen connections between and among the mechanisms, systems, and forms of ordering which often protect ownership, capital, and power.
If we view a parasite as an uninvited guest of its host, an interference, and a threat that conveys and extracts information and knowledge, which one of these is the parasite exploiting public property:

1. Morgan Stanley: The City sold its public property – 35,000 parking meters – to a private entity, Morgan Stanley’s infrastructure investment group. The group created Chicago Parking Meters LLC (CPM) which was subsequently sold to the Sovereign Wealth fund of Abu Dhabi and Germany’s Allianz Capital Partners, paying twice Morgan Stanley’s original $1.16 billion purchase price. This parasite conveyed, or more precisely, privatized the informational advantages from controlling and commercially exploiting non­-public information (a secret City sale of public land). Ironically since Parasite Parking turns into a home, Morgan Stanley’s compensation from Chicago’s public parking deal indirectly went to fund private housing.
2. Parasite Parking: Inserting itself into a Chicago parking space, Parasite Parking sequestered public land to sleep, eat, and host events. These events publicly discussed the above informational advantage and challenged distinctions between public and private ownership, property rights, and usage. Instead of neighbors walking by a parked car, they stopped to think and talk about the status of property and rights materialized in a parking lot.

6018North’s work often challenges notions of public vs. private. What is a private home when it is made public? What is the role of community in creating and receiving individual artworks? Parasite Parking initially infiltrated a parking spot, then 6018North itself, then neighbors…

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One neighbor, Jermel Clark recently moved onto the block of 6018 N Kenmore Avenue. While Jermel missed the opening transformation, when the modular mirrored cubes that resembled a piece of the ground in the parking spot unfolded into tables with benches and a bar with soup and prosecco, he quickly recognized the project as a provocation on Chicago’s privatized parking, a quest for the commons, and the breakout of a parasite.

Here is Jermel’s interpretation of the
project.

While walking down the street in the swirl of thoughts of mirth and mortification, I happened to meet two new neighbors in the Edgewater neighborhood. As we gathered and talked, engaging in the ancient German custom of eating and beer drinking, I sat lost in the somber haze of midsummers night’s eve, the amber radiance was fading beneath the horizon. These two intriguing newcomers were the Berlin-based artificers Jakob Wirth and Alexander Sacharow, and right there on the street, on the parking spot they had seized.
Parasite Parking, as a political manifesto, pits the spirit of anarchy against the ‘’amorphous mass” of consumption, that totalitarian view of capitalist exploitation. It stages the epic battle against the establishment to liberate resources from the cruel clutches of the dominant socio-economic forces of tyranny. A tale of fantastic proportions with two swashbucklers for justice. The issue at hand being the reclamation of public space for the purpose of reinforcing social networks within a community. Jakob and Alexander took advantage of the platform they created to further conversations concerning the equitable distribution of resources.
Parasite Parking is the contribution of two artists to a greater discourse that was sparked by the epic Raisin in the Sun. 6018North had been hosting a show with different expressions of themes inspired by this work of drama: home, hearth, community moorings, social-economic stressors and the equitable distribution of resources and how we squabble about these paltry trifles, instead of larger issues.
I was able to take part in and contribute to the efforts that brought Alexander and Jakob across the ocean to debut their dynamic art installation. A great deal of thought went into the modularity of the “building blocks” that they configured and reconfigured as necessity dictated. In one of its iterations, it served as a lounge from which to observe the world in repose. In another iteration, it became a platform to display and discuss community concerns.
Their installation continued to morph in a dynamic and organic manner, like that of a living being. I helped in the move from their first iteration at 6018North. Working alongside German engineering genius, I was able to see the simple yet elegant composition of the community building blocks. Having battened all hatches, we secured the stacks of building blocks to push them down the street, and then boarded the CTA with them for their next iteration in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.
Their final iteration would take place in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, and I again joined the conversation. This finale was a makeshift stage and seating area that worked as a platform to continue the discussion presented by Parasite Parking. Members of different community-oriented non-profit organizations, discussing their successes and lesser successes, did begin to meander on. After the discussion, Jakob and Alex were bid a fond valedictory with beer and reverie in ancient German fashion, amidst discussions of German history and policy, and speaking of the travails of Luxembourg royals that penned the history of the Western world. And with their work, I am reminded of another story. Let us not forget the campaign and battles of Robin Hood against the Sheriff of Nottingham’s fleecing of the poor, in order to faithfully restore the wealth of the people to the hands of the people.