USF sophomore and visual artist Elena Vee imagined a unique, abstract-looking place where people could peaceably assemble. “I didn’t want it to look like anything else,” she says. “If it were to be built, people would be like, ‘What is that?'” She’d want the structure to provide comfort and relaxation to people for extended periods of time. After all, she says, certain types of expression, such as sit-ins, take time.
“I wanted it to cater to everyone, with no connotations — a very plain space open to interpretation by the people who inhabit it.” Toward those ends, Vee designed a golden, sloping platform structure, accessible from all angles and four-feet high at its topmost point. A canopy structure would provide shelter from sun and rain. The slope, she reasons, provides elevated areas for speakers to address groups, and other areas where everyone is at an equal level for discussion and exchange of ideas.
Vee selected Curtis Hixon Park next to the Tampa Museum of Art because, she says, “it’s very public, very downtown. It’s close to the library and government buildings where decisions are made and conflict begins.” She makes a point of saying that the slope wouldn’t take up the whole park. Though it would be public, she says it wouldn’t intrude upon others who want to use the park without joining the discussion. She has purposely not created a focal point on her slope, so that those who use it can create their own.
It’s essential to Vee that everyone, regardless of their belief, be allowed to use the slope in whatever way they choose. “I would want homeless people to be able to sleep there,” she says. “That’s their right to peaceably assemble. That’s their demonstration every day.”
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2004.
