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About a month ago, footprints started appearing on the 1700 block of East Passyunk Avenue. At the time, there was no explanation.
“The official opening was April 26, but the footprints started appearing two weeks earlier. One by one,” Tobin Rothlein said. “The video needed to be done before the opening, so there was this moment when these footprints were appearing out of nowhere.”
The footprints were the first steps to “Start Here,” a multimedia installation and interactive exhibition created by Rothlein and wife and collaborator Amanda Miller. The “mural” is part of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program’s “Journeys South,” an exploration of the evolving immigrant histories of the area. The program includes many new interpretations of what a mural is, including off-the-wall creations like “Start Here.”
“We started talking about public art and what does that mean to us. I was thinking I’d really love to do the footprints — I have this vision of making these footprints happen,” Miller said. “[Rothlein] had this barbershop in mind. We have worked together on theater pieces but we took the concept as our end idea and we were figuring out how everything ties together. How does it connect?”
“Start Here” features a series of footprints that run down the 1700 block of East Passyunk Avenue and lead participants to a barbershop where a video installation plays interviews and other vignettes of local immigrants. The footprints represent the dances Miller choreographed for the various stories the artists had heard, and the interviewees can be seen performing their dances on tape as part of the exhibit.
“It’s not about the footprints, but the sidewalk. We always want to think about how people interact with the piece, we choreograph the audience or creating a space for them. In the case for this piece, the whole barbershop and then 10 video frames inside them,” Rothlein, who is primarily a video artist, said. “It’s the barbershop and the sidewalk that is the piece for us.
“Those spaces are stages we’ve created for people to interact with. This idea of immigration that in a way, it’s very present. It isn’t the same for everyone.”
The artists, who live at 13th and Dickinson streets, said they occasionally get to see people enjoying the piece when they leave their home. Children seem to take to the piece almost immediately, free-form jumping on the colorful footprints.
“I always hope, I want them to, of course, to have fun. I like the layers of the piece,” Miller, 36, said. “You may see this fun thing to interact with and they get to the end and then it’s, ‘Oh, wait, that was about somebody.’ Then, they get to the barbershop and they get to meet those people.”
Rothlein and Miller met, Miller thinks, as early as 1995, when they lived across from each other in Center City. Their first project was a film Rothlein did for the Pennsylvania Ballet, where Miller had been a dancer since ’93.
“That was the first time we would have ever worked together, but we really collaborated probably in ’99,” Miller said.
They began Miro Dance Theater in 2004, which is a “contemporary performance company dedicated to exploring the intersections of dance, video and visual arts,” according to it’s website. Now married for 11 years, the husband- and-wife team who are producing artistic director and artistic director, respectively, have perfected the art of the collaboration.
“It’s important to keep the conversation going through the whole process,” Miller said. “I enjoy the sharing of ideas. You don’t have to think of everything by yourself and its kind of nice. It’s kind of a relief.
“We have different ways of going about the work and ways of going about the product. I’m always interested in what he’s doing and what he’s thinking and that gets me really excited.”
When the Mural Arts Program launched the “Journeys South” concept, the artists were inspired to get to work.
“We were excited because we live here,” Miller said.
Rothlein added, “I think it’s a really exciting time. The Mural Arts Program has been around a long time, and for the longest time, it really has just been paintings on walls. It was something we know about, but as performance and concept artists it’s not something we think we could be apart of. Mural Arts made a decision to really look at what a mural is. It’s public art, a different type of art.”
The video installation exhibit is located at Monastero Barbershop, 1722 E. Passyunk Ave., and open to the public from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays through June 11. The artists have been pleased with the stories that have unfolded as exhibition-goers reminisce in the space.
“People are coming in and they remember having their first haircut there or their grandfather having his haircut there. It’s been there for 100 years and was shutdown six years ago when the barber died,” Rothlein, 40, said. “We wanted to provoke conversation and you hear their stories of immigration. The kid is dancing and then asks the parents what are these things and you hear it being discussed, the adult telling a kid the story of how an immigrant came here.” SPR
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