"The Roof is on Fire"/"No Blood No Foul" included two linked performance events that use the urban settings in Oakland, CA as backdrops for explorations of conflict between youth and police officers. In one performance, the public wandered from car to car under stark lights of a parking lot, listening to heated discussion, provocation, insight and tenderness, witnessing an authentic exchange between youths and Police officers that gives human face to a significant social dilemma. In another performance, youth and police met face to face on the basketball court, transforming the tensions of the street into positive action. Both youth and police suffer from negative public stereotyping and both have misperceptions of the other; these performances confront and challenge these stereotypes.
project by Suzanne Lacy
No Blood/No Foul was an event that pitted youth against police officers in a tough, competitive, and fast-paced “basketball as performance” artwork. The performance, with its live action video interrupts, pre-recorded interviews of players, half-time dance presentation, original sound track, and sports commentators, mixed up the rules of the game. Adult referees were replaced by youth referees, then no referees (street ball, where the rule is, “If there is no blood then there is no foul”) and for the last quarter, the audience as referee. The performance received extensive local and national television coverage, an example of the Oakland Youth Policy Initiative in action, and was attended by the mayor and several council members.
http://www.suzannelacy.com/1990soakland_noblood_performance.htm
The Roof Is On Fire featured 220 public high school students in unscripted and unedited conversations on family, sexuality, drugs, music, neighborhoods and the future as they sat in 100 cars parked on a rooftop garage. With cameras rolling and audience members roaming from car to car to listen, the production had the haunting familiarity of images on the evening news. But unlike the typical newscast, this story had a different twist: youth represented themselves. The Roof Is On Fire was aired as a one-hour documentary by the Bay Area’s local NBC affiliate and was covered extensively on local news and national CNN.
http://www.suzannelacy.com/1990soakland_roof_overview.htm
I found out about these two projects by Suzanne Lacy that happend in the Bay Area via Gunk (http://www.gunk.org/grants.html#lacey) who helped fund two projects "The Roof is on Fire" and "No Blood No Foul." The Gunk Foundation is currently involved with "supporting the production of non-traditional public art projects."
Posted by: Joseph at April 24, 2004 05:41 PM