IMPOSSIBLE WANTS

Inspired by the Situationist International’s notion of ‘the beach beneath the street’ and their personal experiences of psychogeography in St. Louis, Maura Pellettieri and Laurencia Strauss came together to create Impossible Wants, a social practice project that publicly investigated desire and loss in real time. Impossible Wants (2013-2015) was an experimental and interdependent exchange among poets, visual artists, the City of St. Louis Street Department, and the public.

Over 50 St. Louis residents responded to the questions: “What do you want that you can’t have?” and “How do you deal with this impossibility?”

A team of poets gathered responses to these two questions over many months in a variety of St. Louis neighborhoods and public sites (cafes, bars, sidewalks, bicycle shops, parks). For each response the poets received, they created a poem, or an “answer” to the participant’s impossibility. Using carbon paper, the poets created three copies in real time: one for the participant, one for the poet, and one for the project’s archives.

A team of visual artists created Linocut tiles in response to the poems that most moved them to make. In the final state of the project, after a variety of Linocut tiles had been produced by a variety of artists, the Impossible Wants team went into the streets with the St. Louis City Street Department to fill potholes with the tiles. The experts became students, as poets and artists learned and witnessed how to fill potholes from the City Road Crew, who generously shared their craftsmanship and insights on the history of the city’s roads. Underneath each tile lay roadfill, and embedded in the roadfill lay a refined and edited copy of the poem-desire-answer that had generated its tile, as a seed.

Impossible Wants was initially presented publicly with a poetry reading that toured the tile sites, offering participants a chance to experience the city via poetry and art, and to live the journey of the map that was generated by their fellow inhabitants’ desires and unmet needs. Along the way we learned about the pothole sites together—some of which carried potent histories, but which were selected only based on the fact that their roads wanted filling. Participants became teachers. Poets listened. Artists held the map.

The Impossible Wants tile and poem map can be found here.

Response No. 103, Poem No. 80—Poem by Maura Pellettieri. Photo by Maura Pellettieri

Poets work their booths at a tile-making event at Beverly. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Tile-making at Beverly. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Close up of Lucy Clark’s tile, “Becoming.” Photo by Maura Pellettieri

Poem-seed in the tar, just before setting the tile. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Poem seed and asphalt. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Preparing a tile for the road. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

The importance of placement, embedding with the City crew. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Setting tiles with the crew. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

“Verve” gets placed in the street. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Lucy Clark reads a poem at the site of her embedded tile. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Poetry reading in the streets, downtown St. Louis. If you look closely you can see the history of the road’s predecessor roads. There are three roads on this road. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Embedding Philip Matthew’s tile outside The Mud House on Cherokee St. Photo by Laurencia Strauss

Map of poem-seeds and tile-fills throughout St. Louis, with corresponding poets and artists.

COMMUNITY ENGAGED ART AS PUBLIC RITUAL

Maura Pellettieri and Laurencia Strauss presented their findings on vulnerability, desire, and loss at in two artist talks: the first at Washington University in St. Louis and the second at the Cleveland Institute of Art as part of “Unruly Engagements: On the Social Turn in Contemporary Art and Design.”

Impossible Wants, “Unruly Engagements: On the Social Turn in

Contemporary Art and Design,” Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, November 7, 2014

Impossible Wants, Hurst Lounge, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, April 20, 2015

Collaborators and CONTRIBUTERS

Creators: Maura Pellettieri and Laurencia Strauss

Poets: Lucy Clark, Aaron Coleman, Patrick Johnson, Maura Pellettieri, Justin Phillip Reed

Artists: Jennifer Baker, Natalie Baldeon, Lyndon Barrois Jr., Lisa Bulawsky, Lauren Cardenas, Lucy Clark, Addoley Dzegede, Carling Hale, Cassie Jones, Cole Lu, Philip Matthews, Catalina Ouyang, Juliet Simone, Kellie Spano, Emily Squires, Laurencia Strauss

City of St. Louis Street Department: Todd Waelterman, Director; Kent Flake, Commissioner of Streets; Bill Burkhardt, Street Supervisor; Thomas Clemons, Labor Foreman; Chris Walker, Labor Foreman; Louis Butler, Utility Worker; Willy Ligon, Utility Worker; Lawrance Mack, Utility Worker; Keith Wallace, Utility Worker

Thank you to Washington University in St. Louis, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the City of St. Louis Street Department, and the organizers of “Unruly Engagements: On the Social Turn in Contemporary Art and Design.” Much gratitude for the generosity of the poets, artists, and road workers who made this project possible. Finally, thank you to the many St. Louis residents who bravely and vulnerably contributed their questions and desires to fill the roads.