H E A L T H I S P L A C E
What does it mean to heal on the scale of a town/city/community?
A Brief Introduction to Santa Barbara:
Santa Barbara is a microcosm of coastal California in its diversity, unique potentials, and challenges. Physically, it is a small town nestled between the mountains and ocean with only one major highway running through it. Although known as a wealthy vacation & retirement town, you will also find the social infrastructure that makes this possible; poor and working class farmers, educators, service & retail industry workers. This is just one example of how the iconic image of Santa Barbara belies its complex realities.
The built environment has played a major role in shaping what is modern Santa Barbara. The signature materiality and architecture of Spanish colonial buildings hold the contradictions of immense beauty and pain. The city as we now know it, was built around the Presidio and Spanish Mission. The Mission & its revival style buildings in relation to the landscape has proven successful in attracting people to continue living and shaping this community.
Through the use of material and process like: adobe, mosaic, strict zoning, density & height limits, the building entities in Santa Barbara pride themselves in maintaining its “cultural heritage & authentic neighborhood feel”. However, the underlying assumptions of this vision of preservation, and how it intersects with issues of equity & massive environmental, economic, political, demographic, and mobility changes often go unexamined.
The question moving forward is how do we address this in a manner that is considerate of the root causes of systemic oppression in all arenas of civic life? The fear of confronting rapid changes is tied with the fear of losing what is working for some. So how do we engage with our diverse ecologies of expertise to address our issues? One aspect of what makes Santa Barbara a vital study is that the city is small enough where small changes can be felt by all locals, and big enough where we can clearly see how local solutions could be applied elsewhere in the nation.
I believe we will find some answers in the excavation of forgotten wisdom and histories. For example, Syuxtun is the name of one of the main ancestral villages of Chumash indigenous inhabitants of what we now call Santa Barbara. Little to none of this narrative is ever evoked through spoken, written, built or memorialized history in the city. Yet much of the natural infrastructure that interacts with built infrastructure was & is originally tended to by Chumash people and their deep knowledge of place. In general, we need to ask what it would look like to integrate different forms of knowledge within the built & designed world to ensure the safety and joy of the next generations of Santa Barbarans?
This is a participatory research project in Santa Barbara. After having many informal discussions with local colleagues and friends about the complex dynamics in Santa Barbara [SB], I decided to create a call out to gather more stories, asking some of these questions:
︎What would it look like to honor land & indigenous Chumash roots & lifeways in this city?
︎Can you share any important forgotten SB history?
︎ How do we restore right relations within ourselves, between communities, and between communities & the land in SB? What needs to be unlearned, healed and HOW?
︎ What are the obvious and not so obvious
binaries/divides/borders/dualities in SB and how do we reconcile them?
︎ How do we honor all of our intersections in relation to place?
Are there spaces in SB that already embody a sort of freedom to you?
︎ Where and how do you access your freedom here?
︎ What would it mean to memorialize struggles for liberation in this city?
︎ What are alternate ways [than for example old Spanish days fiesta] of celebrating and re-visioning place?
︎ What would a truth and healing act look like?
︎ What would a decolonized SB look and feel like to you [dream BIG & BRAVE!]?
︎ What would initial steps there be?
︎ What would the landscape, buildings, and interactions be like?
︎Can you share any important forgotten SB history?
︎ How do we restore right relations within ourselves, between communities, and between communities & the land in SB? What needs to be unlearned, healed and HOW?
︎ What are the obvious and not so obvious
binaries/divides/borders/dualities in SB and how do we reconcile them?
︎ How do we honor all of our intersections in relation to place?
Are there spaces in SB that already embody a sort of freedom to you?
︎ Where and how do you access your freedom here?
︎ What would it mean to memorialize struggles for liberation in this city?
︎ What are alternate ways [than for example old Spanish days fiesta] of celebrating and re-visioning place?
︎ What would a truth and healing act look like?
︎ What would a decolonized SB look and feel like to you [dream BIG & BRAVE!]?
︎ What would initial steps there be?
︎ What would the landscape, buildings, and interactions be like?
In asking these questions, I hoped to foster conversations about addressing some of the big changes happening to the community with more urgency. From this call out I was able to compile important wisdom relating to the interface of SB’s native & natural environment to today’s built environment.
Below is documentation of initial efforts of visioning & mobilizing for a decolonized Santa Barbara in digital & physical forms. The installation [pictured right] is gathered from community members, allies, and news archives. The display briefly introduces:
1. Context/history of Santa Barbara, illustrating a truthful reckoning and why decolonization︎︎︎reindigenization is imperative for a liberated future for all .
2. Manifestos for decolonization︎︎︎reindigenization .
3. Methods & spells for embodying change [through liberated relationship//liberated love & generative conflict] .
1. Context/history of Santa Barbara, illustrating a truthful reckoning and why decolonization︎︎︎reindigenization is imperative for a liberated future for all .
2. Manifestos for decolonization︎︎︎reindigenization .
3. Methods & spells for embodying change [through liberated relationship//liberated love & generative conflict] .
