Reimagining our role in the construction of public space.

From July 19 - August 18 in front of the Samuel Adams statue in Dock Square, Colombian-born, New England-based artist Juan Obando asked us to reimagine our role in the construction of collective space with Summer Sets. Evoking new construction while confronting public space and history, Summer Sets represented a hyper-realistic, idealized rendering of Boston’s Dock Square mounted on scaffolding. 

This monumental intervention provided a literal and figurative platform for visitors to add themselves, or alternative representations, to the memorial landscape and reenvision their roles in the construction and future of Boston's collective spaces.

UNFOLDING PROJECT #SUMMERSETSBOS

Without its familiar statue, this monumental intervention aimed to change the view that visitors expect replacing it with a vacated cityscape. Acting as both reflector and projector, it created space for today’s citizens to reimagine and model alternatives for memorials and public spaces. 

With the snap of a selfie, through a conversation with a local project Ambassador or by participating in weekly events, we collectively interrogated, “How do we recognize and remember legacies? How do I fit into this imagined future? What is my role in the construction of public space?”  

Years in the making, in part inspired by the summer of 2020 protests, Juan's intervention built on his work of critical intervention of social systems that employ screen-based installations to speculate new worlds, asking us all to reimagine together.

Read the Summer Sets press release here.

#SummerSetsBOS Photo Collection

  1. Visit #SummerSetsBOS in Dock Square

  2. Snap a pic of yourself/loved ones/object or anything that resonates for you AND answers the prompt

  3. Follow/tag N+T on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Twitter using #SummerSetsBOS

  4. OR email us your BEST photo at info@nowandthere.org

Photos by Dominic Chavez (c) and Visitors

Video by White Birch Media

 
 

July 19 - August 18, 2022

Open 24 hours, 7 days a week
8 AM - 8 PM Ambassadors PRESENT
WEEKLY EVENTS

N+T Public Art Ambassadors stood onsite from 8 AM to 8 PM to guide conversations and record thoughts which became part of the archive of the project.

 

Temporary intervention Summer Sets stood in Dock Square between Faneuil Hall and Congress Street at 6 Faneuil Hall Square, Boston, MA 02109 close to the MBTA Government Center T station.

 
 

A local favorite

Juan Obando is a Colombian artist working between Bogotá, Colombia, and Boston, MA, USA currently residing in Phoenix, AZ, USA. He is an Associate Professor, Co-Coordinator of the Low Residency MFA Program at MassArt. He holds a BA in Design and Architecture from Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and an MFA in Electronic and Time-Based Media Art from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). His work focuses on the critical intervention of social systems and the subsequent production of video performances, post-digital objects and screen-based installations — presenting the screen as a site where ideology confronts aesthetics and new worlds are speculated.

"I was into skateboarding with my friends growing up for nearly three years every weekend. I skated in this plaza where there was a statue of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, a Spanish conqueror who is the 'founder' of Bogotá. Until last year when this statue was knocked down by activists, I didn't even know who this was supposed to be. My eye level and my interest in this site — and the way we monumentalize it was through our action and interaction with it, how we could skate it better and how we could make use of its design. A very physical process that was coming from us; experiencing that space from a completely different angle.”

- Juan Obando, during a virtual N+T Asks panel with Goethe-Institut, Boston

Obando's work has been exhibited in Mexico, France, Colombia, Germany, and the US. Recent solo shows include “La Bodeguita de La Concordia” at Galería Santa Fé for the Luis Caballero National Art Prize (Bogotá, Colombia, 2021), "Pro Revolution" at Espacio Odeón (Bogotá, Colombia, 2019), "Full Collabs" at Distillery Gallery (Boston, 2018), "Jeep VIP" at Volta Art Fair (New York, 2017), and "Collabs" at MIAMI Prácticas Contemporáneas (Bogotá, 2017). Selected group exhibitions include Game Changers (MAAM, Boston, 2020), Video Sur (Palais de Tokyo, France, 2018), Rencontres de la Photographie (Arles, France, 2017), and MDE15 (Medellín, Colombia, 2015). He has been a resident artist at Casa Tres Patios (Medellín) in 2012 and at SOMA (Mexico City, Mexico) in 2017 and 2018. Obando was also awarded a Rhizome commission from The New Museum for the project “Museum Mixtape” in 2012, a MassArt Foundation grant in 2017 and an Art Matters fellowship in 2019.

Banner image: Juan Obando’s The Other Campaign, 2019 (image provided by the artist)

Image courtesy of the artist.

 

Asking the questions of our times

Public monuments: we all have questions. What is the difference between a monument and a memorial? Who should be remembered or projected in public space? Will monuments one day be gone, and if so, what will go in their place? (And did you know the statue of Samuel Adams was created by Watertown MA-born Anne Whitney?) In partnership with the Goethe Institut Boston and with additional support provided by New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), we asked even more questions in preparation for Summer Sets with Season Four of N+T Asks. 

With special guests from Boston and Germany, we interrogated memorials, creativity, and how to imagine new worlds.

On April 19th, 7:30 pm, Summer Sets artist Juan Obando and Mischa Kuball from Germany had a lively conversation about how artists can intervene with monuments and create new modes of commemoration, in a discussion moderated by Devin Morris of the Teacher’s Lounge. This in-person panel happened live at the Goethe-Institut Boston 170 Beacon Street.

On Wednesday, March 22, we hosted the first in a series of discussions looking at the process behind building new monuments in public space. Artists L’Merchie Frazier and Ulf Aminde discussed the objects, symbols, moments, and peoples that get to be memorialized in our collective memory. Moderated by Devin Morris of the Teacher's Lounge.

On Wednesday, June 22, moderator Devin Morris of the Teacher’s Lounge, and panelists Kathrin Jentjens from New Patrons and Abigail Satinsky, of the Tufts University Art Galleries and the Collective Future Fund, discussed how memorials are funded. They covered such topics as microfinance, creative economies, and the role of radical imagination in transforming our networks of care.

Banner image: A production photo from Liz Glynn’s Open House, 2018 (c) Ryan C. McMahon

 
 

In partnership with

A project of this magnitude, originally imagined for the summer of 2020, relies on general operating funds made possible by the unwavering support of patrons like you and with the help of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Cultural Council, the Reopen Creative Boston Fund, administered by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture, and the Wagner Foundation.

N+T Asks Season Four was a partnership with the Goethe-Institut Boston with additional support provided by New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA).

…and in recognition

Now + There acknowledges that Summer Sets resides on what was once waterfront and the unceded land of the Massachusett people. We acknowledge the Massachusett people, past, present, and future. Following the erasure of the Massachusett People, this location was the site of commerce including the buying and selling of enslaved people in the 18th Century, a practice that yielded wealth and power that built much of Boston. Now + There acknowledges that our temporary public art projects and related events take place on lands and within systems that were founded upon the exclusions and erasures of indigenous peoples and the brutal system of chattel slavery.