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Trailer talk: performance journalism staging conversations and re-engaging public space
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Trailer talk: performance journalism staging conversations and re-engaging public space
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Content
TRAILER TALK: PERFORMANCE JOURNALISM
STAGING CONVERSATIONS
AND
RE-ENGAGING PUBLIC SPACE
by
Sabrina Artel
________________________________________________________________
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
August 2012
Copyright 2012 Sabrina Artel
ii
Dedication
To all of the people who participate in this project, your stories continue to activate,
inspire and surprise me on this amplified stage we are building together.
iii
Acknowledgments
This is the culmination of numerous people who have generously guided me.
The fertile soil of storytelling and journalistic practice has unfolded during this
process only because of their immense support that I so appreciate.
This thesis has been shepherded under the passionate guidance of my chair,
Sasha Anawalt who has privileged me with her support, dedication to the arts and
incredible insight. Thanks to thesis committee members Tim Page who stepped in
with his fortifying kindness and affirmation of my voice manifest through language.
Also to Vicki Callahan who opened my mind to the expansive field of digital media
and its potential to become another tool for engagement and narratives. I am thankful
to Geoffrey Cowan for his preliminary discussions about the thesis that propelled me
to further investigate the definitions of journalism. I am thankful to David L. Ulin
who graciously added his insights about my work. Thanks to Geneva Overholser and
the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism for giving me the time and
resources to research and grow.
Helene Shulman Lorenz introduced me to the study of participatory
methodologies with its empowered mission of collaboration and social change. The
Roski School of Fine Art provided the laboratory for my own art practice thanks to
John Tain, Jud Fine and Rhea Anastas.
iv
I will always be grateful for the uplifting friendship of my cohort member
Gemma Cubero whose belief in my work and her questions nurtured it in delightful
ways.
To Laura Flanders, Aileen Gunther, and Carol Martin for their wisdom and
consistent guidance.
My partner Mimi McGurl gave me more than I can express throughout this
whole project that took me away from home. At every moment of this journey she
shared her academic expertise and bountiful love.
To Renée Petropoulos whose vision of art and its essential role in life always
inspires and stimulates my own practice. Her support, analysis and persistent
insightful questioning made this process unfold, making it possible in every way.
v
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
List of Figures vi
Abstract viii
Chapter 1: Trailer Talk 1
Chapter 2: The Beginning 11
Chapter 3: Performance Journalism 15
Chapter 4: From the Mountaintop 21
Chapter 5: Into the Frack (A Fracking Revolution Under My Feet) 30
Chapter 6: The Public Square 47
Bibliography 50
Appendices 53
Appendix A: Trailer Talk’s Secret Brownie Recipe 53
Appendix B: Fundraiser for Trailer Talk’s Kayford Mountain Trip 55
Appendix C: Trailer Talk’s Frack Talk Shale Water Project Website 56
Appendix D: Trailer Talk Visits Yellow Springs, Ohio 57
vi
List of Figures
Figure 1. Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk 2
Figure 2. Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk, East Village, NYC, 2009 2
Figure 3. Trailer Talk: Republican National Convention, St. Mark’s 4
Church, NYC, 8-31-04
Figure 4. Trailer Talk: David L. Ulin, Sherman Oaks, CA, 3-30-12 9
Figure 5. Trailer Talk: Anti-War in Iraq March and Rally, Washington, 13
D.C., 9-24-05
Figure 6. Trailer Talk: Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA 15
CAN), Main St., Skid Row. L to R, General Dogon, Sabrina
Artel and Al Sabo, 3-8-12.
Figure 7. Trailer Talk: From L to R, The late Judy Bonds, Sabrina Artel 25
and Larry Gibson, Kayford Mountain, WV, 7-5-08 (Photo,
Donna Binder)
Figure 8. Trailer Talk: Ed Wiley, Kayford Mountain, WV, 7-5-08 27
Figure 9. Trailer Talk: Julie and Craig Sautner with ‘water’ from their 34
well, Catskill Mountainkeeper Barnfest, Beaverkill, NY, 7-31-10
Figure 10. Trailer Talk: Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Gasland Film 42
Screening, Callicoon, NY, 9-5-10
Figure 11. From the outro of Trailer Talk’s weekly radio show: “I’m 49
Sabrina Artel, coming to you from the kitchen table from
somewhere out there on the road. Please join us at:
www.trailertalk.net.”
Figure A.1. Trailer Talk’s Secret Brownie Recipe 53
Figure B.1. Fundraiser for Trailer Talk’s Kayford Mountain, WV trip, 55
Homestead School, Glen Spey, NY, 6-28-08
vii
Figure C.1. Trailer Talk’s Frack Talk Shale Water Project Interactive 56
Blogsite, Interact Section, www.trailertalk.net
Figure D.1. Trailer Talk was hosted by the Nonstop Art Institute to share 57
The Shale Project for two days on the Main St of Yellow Springs,
Ohio, 9-2 & 9-3-11
viii
Abstract
This thesis is about Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk a model of journalism that I
have named, performance journalism. Stories from America’s traveling kitchen
table converge as mobile media meets a radio show by inviting civic discourse on
our streets. Trailer Talk’s performance journalism is a community event, a live
performance and a public conversation that takes place in and around a 1965
BeeLine travel trailer. It combines the live in-person event and recorded
conversations with social media tools and an interactive website. It explores ways
that this hybrid journalistic form can enhance and engage community with a
conversation event that encourages dialogue at the ever-expanding portable kitchen
table that symbolizes the public square where our stories are shared, heard and
contemplated. It considers essential in-person dialogue and public storytelling and
uses the social media revolution to find additional ways to connect communities. The
trailer itself becomes a portal of playful possibility and rigorous dialogue where the
reflection and discovery of ideas happen on the streets. It gives voice to a community
by creating a traveling town hall. The project brings diverse and often opposing
voices together for the benefit of social engagement. Trailer Talk, which began in
2003, is mobile media in action that explores the re-imagining of public space and
the connection between our physical and virtual dialogues with the art, culture,
politics, and environmental themes.
1
Chapter 1: Trailer Talk
Performance studies builds on the emergence of a postcolonial world
where cultures are colliding, interfering with, and fertilizing each
other. Arts and academic disciplines alike are most alive at their
ever-changing borders.
— Richard Schechner, “The Future of Ritual”
This is the story of a red and white 1965 BeeLine travel trailer. I tow this
trailer with speakers attached to the outside into neighborhoods, then I park, open the
door and invite all kinds of people to sit down at the portable kitchen table for public
recorded conversations. The smell of homemade brownies floats through the
louvered windows, admittedly acting as a kind of seduction beckoning guests. I set
up two microphones (a third sits by my side for additional visitors, along with a
wireless hand-held so I can come in and out of the trailer) and a sound mixing board
on the kitchen table by the front windows visible from the street.
This is also my story. I am the creator and host of Sabrina Artel’s Trailer
Talk, a unique multi-media journalism project that combines traditional elements of
the interview and reportage with what mass media savant Henry Jenkins calls a
convergent field of participation and trans-media platforms. At the intersection of
several disciplines including, theatre, conceptual art, radio broadcast, participatory
methodologies and sound theory, Trailer Talk engages local communities through
live conversations about issues that directly affect them.
2
Figure 1. Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk
Figure 2. Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk, East Village, NYC, 2009
3
The Trailer Talk project is how and why my life has become intertwined with
that of a 15 foot BeeLine travel trailer. I will share this model of journalism that I’ve
been practicing for the last nine years and have named performance journalism. This
mobile form enters a community by setting up on the street and re-engaging public
space in order to participate in the tangible creation of narratives in real time.
The trailer itself presents a physical invitation for participation. I hang signs
up on all four sides of the trailer, place red and white lawn chairs in front, and put a
faux-grass welcome mat at the door creating the “front yard” of my traveling home. I
then sit at the microphone in the kitchen’s red vinyl booth, headphones on, and
welcome people in my front yard to join me inside for a snack and some
conversation. Everyone on the street, whether they come in to talk or not, becomes
part of the performance, watching through the windows and listening to an intimate
yet publically staged dialogue.
Since its beginnings, journalism has always both reflected and produced the
culture it covers, and due to the digital revolution, our present culture is creating a
demand for an active citizenry participating alongside professional journalists.
Whether it be the “expanded journalistic field” media scholar Clay Shirky describes
or the seismic shift from a “sit-back-be-told” to a “making-and-doing” culture that
the Irvine Foundation defined in its study, Getting in on the Act, this radical shift
provides an opportunity to expand the field for sharing essential information.
1
1
James Irvine Foundation (2011, November 8). Getting in on the Act: New Report on Participatory
Arts Engagement. Arts. Retrieved from http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2011/11/getting-in-on-act-
new-report-on.html
4
Figure 3. Trailer Talk: Republican National Convention, St. Mark’s Church, NYC,
8-31-04
My background as an experimental theatre artist informs my interest in the
ritual of coming together and the inherently political and theatrical nature of
discourse. Whether Trailer Talk is set up at a farmer’s market in my hometown of
Liberty, New York, in the Catskills, focusing on favorite recipes or at an anti-war
march in Washington, D.C. speaking to protesters or a fracking debate in Yellow
Springs, Ohio, Trailer Talk is an attempt to use journalism and theatre to activate the
public sphere in an original and positive way.
5
Since I first started setting up my portable home on Main Streets and at
community events in 2003, the project has grown and I have continued to experiment
with how to best serve the participants and their stories. Many people have now
heard of — and frequently request — my special Trailer Talk brownies (for a recipe,
see Appendix A), but occasionally I serve other treats like seasonal wild
strawberries, home-made pizza, or the hamantaschen cookies I baked for an event in
the Catskill Hasidic community. On a hot summer day I might offer lemonade. I
have been known to pour mugs of hot chocolate for the guests who have braved
freezing rain and snow. When I received an inside scoop that my guests George
Clinton and the P-Funk band liked Hennessy, I hunted down a bottle and produced it
on the kitchen table as if by magic after one of their concerts in the Bronx. These are
some of the many fun ways I have tried to encourage community engagement so that
people’s opinions about culture, politics, the arts and the environment will be openly
and comfortably shared.
_____________
I had been acutely aware of the significance of having a voice since hearing
stories from my mother and grandparents about fleeing Germany during Hitler's
reign of terror. Grappling with ideas around identity and home, I tried to absorb that
my family was born into one region of Germany, Upper Silesia, before World War II
and at the end their hometown had dissappeared and reemerged as Poland. Beloved
members of our family vanished too. This unfathable, yet unfortunately all too
6
common erasure of lives and identity forged a quest in me, not only to maintain
awareness of universal struggles and injustices, but to search for personal truth,
resilience and social transformation.
My interest in definitions of community, the rituals that enhance our
experiences and the intersections between our private and public lives began when
following high school, I studied anthropology at U.C. Berkeley. However, my
exploration of the fusion possible between traditional forms with the avant-garde
were solidified at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Beginning at the
Stella Adler Conservatory, I eventually transferred to the Experimental Theatre Wing
(ETW). Both the Adler and the ETW training focused on the important role of the
artist as a teller of truth, a catalyst for awareness and potential change. I went on to
perform in New York’s downtown performance scene of the late 1980s and 90s
including the WOW Café, La MaMa, PS 122, and ABC No Rio among others.
The five years from 1990 through 1995 that I spent performing with avant-
garde theatre director and playwright Reza Abdoh, as a founding member of his
company, Dar A Luz, is also an essential part of the lineage that informs Trailer
Talk.
2
Reza Abdoh’s work pushed the boundaries of theatre itself and the company
created original multi-media productions about contemporary social justice issues.
The work involved a level of risk both physical and emotional that transmitted a
visceral urgency between the audience and myself. It connected us together as both
performer and audience, as collaborators in the immersive theatre event.
2
Reza Abdoh (n.d.). Collection of production sound tapes. The New York Public Library.
7
John Bell, theatre academic wrote about the work of Abdoh and Dar A Luz:
Abdoh’s work was unusual for the 1990s American theatre scene because
(like the 1960s avantgarde theaters) it focused primarily on the ensemble
performance of a large continuing company, and because (unlike most
postmodernist performance) it so openly sought to define Abdoh’s point of
view: at once queer, non-Western, antihierarchical, political and mystically
religious. Abdoh’s theatrical brilliance was readily evident in his striking use
of sound, image, text; but most importantly, all this brilliance was always in
service to his ability to mold theatre into a multi-leveled, eminently
recognizable evocation of where-we-are.
3
The work with Dar A Luz made during the last five years of Reza’s life
reinforced my belief that there is no separation between work and life. Each of our
individual actions is inherently politicized. Reza died of complications from AIDS in
1995 at the age of thirty-two. The loss of my dear friend and mentor during this time,
along with both my parents and other beloved friends, created my own urgency to
find intimate, joyful and surprising ways to connect our universal concerns and
struggles. Trailer Talk is my avenue for playfully asking tough questions and
celebrating our realities in unexpected locations so we can, together, be heard,
listened to and seen. It presents itself as a home, both literal and symbolic.
My work seeks to find new strategies for conveying information by locating
the art of journalism and the journalism of art inside one another, providing an active
and permeable lens of social practice. By inviting civic discourse on just about any
street, Trailer Talk creates a mobile town hall bringing diverse and often opposing
voices together. Trailer Talk is mobile media in action. It is an emerging genre using
3
John Bell. (n.d.). Reza Abdoh 1963-1995. TDR (1988), 39(4) (Autumn, 1995), p. 9. Retrieved from
IT Press Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.usc.edu/stable/1146477
8
the travel trailer as a performative device, presenting a public forum and
documenting the exchange of information, making journalism a living form. It
acknowledges and works within the larger ecosystem of site-specificity by creating
the framework for building narratives.
When writer and Los Angeles Times Book Critic David L. Ulin joined Trailer
Talk in March in Los Angeles to discuss his books and the history of L.A., he said
when asked about his experience of Trailer Talk for a documentary film about the
project:
I love the idea of sitting at the table because I think it creates an informal
setting for rigorous conversation. The culture that we live in is so quick, is so
fast paced, is so focused on reaction rather than response that we don’t get the
opportunity in the way that we used to, to just sit in an expansive
environment and play with ideas.
What interests me about Trailer Talk is that it is kind of defusing the
intimidation factor of journalism in a certain sense. Because Journalism often
works, I mean when I do interviews, often I parachute in from wherever I am,
even if it is across the street or whatever. But you know, coming into
someone’s space, invading someone’s space in a sort of sense, talking to
them and then getting out of their space.
This is actually Sabrina bringing her space. So she is inviting people into her
space, which is a different kind of situation. And in some ways I think it is a
more intimate situation. You are not imposing yourself on the other space.
You are the host rather than a forced guest. So, I am not sure quite how, but I
think that changes the dynamic in a very interesting kind of way.
And the other part too, is that you are not just inviting them, you are bringing
it into a community and then creating your own space. If you take it on the
road or she takes it on the road, it is taking Sabrina’s space and bringing it
into a community so she becomes in a certain proxy way part of that
community for the time that she is there. And when interviews take place at
this table people who are being interviewed have to come into her space even
if her space is inside their space. In a certain sense that makes sense. And that
changes dynamics again, it makes it much more conversational as opposed to
9
interrogatory and there is something very interesting to me about that
dynamic.
4
Figure 4. Trailer Talk: David L. Ulin, Sherman Oaks, CA, 3-30-12
Audio and occasional video recordings are secondary aspects of live Trailer
Talk events. I have come to see these recordings as a kind of residue or trace, part of
the process of the project in its inter-disciplinary expression. They create the living
archive. The half-hour radio show broadcasts on WJFF Radio Catskill in
4
Gemma Cubero. (2012). Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. Sherman Oaks, CA.
10
Jeffersonville, NY, Geneva Community Radio in the Finger Lakes Region of New
York state and WIOX in Roxbury, NY, KWMR in Point Reyes Station, CA, and
KDVS in Davis, CA, and WFTE in Scranton, PA, and WXPI in Williamsport, PA.
Podcasts are also available on the Internet. The radio show started airing on my local
community station, WJFF Radio Catskill and slowly the number of stations is
increasing.
Every time the trailer travels to another location that event adds to the
camper’s history. The object of the trailer itself literally becomes a space; a mini-
home filled with the history of the Trailer Talk events. Performance journalism
includes this embedded history that creates a multitude of ways to share stories and
information. It continues to evolve as is necessary for the themes discussed and the
location. The trailer itself is coming to represent a kind of ‘old school’ interactivity
combined with ‘new school’ social media tools for merging discourse.
11
Chapter 2: The Beginning
To uncover the positive side of radio with a suggestion for its re-
functionalization: radio must be transformed from a distribution
apparatus into a communications apparatus. The radio could be the
finest possible communications apparatus in public life, a vast system
of channels. That is, it could be so, if it is understood how to receive
as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear,
how to bring him into a network instead of isolating him.
— Bertolt Brecht, “The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication”
Although I love and still admire traditional radio documentary and broadcast
journalism, my career as a theatre artist and my studies in anthropology led me
toward a model of journalism that merged my educational and professional
background with the vast power of Carlyle’s Fourth Estate — journalism as the pillar
of true democracy.
5
It all started when I produced Talk Universe at my local community radio
station, WJFF 90.5 FM Radio Catskill for its weekly magazine show, Making Waves,
and plunged into the world of the radio interview. I felt tremendously connected to
my guests as I sat in the radio studio even though we were not talking in person.
Radio felt intimate, and it was this intimacy, not only with my guests, but ultimately
with my listeners — and the potential for them to also participate — that became a
goal. I wanted to find a way to share the live radio interview experience face to face
with everybody.
5
What Is The Fourth Estate? (n.d.). About.com US Politics. Retrieved June 19, 2012, from
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/politicaljunkies/a/fourth_estate.htm
12
Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, “The medium is the message,” reverberated
strongly when I sought another way to share messages.
6
One of the limitations of
radio production is that it holds you to specific space. If I was going to get more
intimate I needed another way to share the radio conversation and not assume
intimacy, but seek to create it publicly as a way to make more relevant the stories my
guests and I shared.
The trailer found me. You could call me a trailer magnet. First I impulsively
bought a 21 foot old Trottwood trailer and parked it in my driveway researching
trailer histories, associations of them to class and mobility issues. I loved road trips
and adventure is inherent in a trailer’s mobility. The microcosm of home inspired me
to imagine opening its door to strangers. The late Allan Bérubé, a historian, public
intellectual, and my dear friend explored the Trottwood camper with me as he talked
about living in a trailer as a little boy. I am grateful to him for educating me about
the complex symbol of the trailer embedded with a multitude of meanings.
7
It was the early spring of 2003, The U.S. was sending “embedded journalists”
to the war in Iraq, and I felt the democratic ideals that I cherished were eroding. I
was angry, energized and motivated to hit the streets and really find out what people
were thinking. Could we believe what was being broadcast on the mainstream
media? No. Not as information was leaked about controlling images of the dead
soldiers returning in caskets or the Patriot Act expanding definitions of terrorism and
6
McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (2005). The Medium is the Massage. Gingko Press.
7
Freedman, E., D’Emilio, J., & Bérubé, A. (2011). My Desire for History: Essays by Allan Bérubé,
edited by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman. The University of North Carolina Press.
13
the arrest and incarceration of citizens, or unchecked wire-tapping or the language of
fear used by the Bush Administration.
8
Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter were not yet in existence as
mainstream communication vehicles and didn’t become used by the mainstream until
2008 and 2009, respectively. The need to disrupt mainstream media and create a new
media form was my impetus to hook the trailer up and see what would happen, if I
could connect the interview into a conversation and dialogue around issues relevant
to the particulars of a community. There was only one way to find out – to get in the
trailer and head into communities.
Figure 5. Trailer Talk: Anti-War in Iraq March and Rally, Washington, D.C.,
9-24-05
8
Bill Summary & Status - 107th Congress (2001 - 2002) - H.R.3162 - THOMAS (Library of
Congress). (n.d.). Retrieved June 20, 2012, from http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/bdquery/z?d107:H.R.3162
14
When I became a full time resident in the Sullivan County Catskills in 2001,
my understanding of community radically changed because I was living in the
country. I had been living in Manhattan before then and, in fact, had always lived in
urban or suburban centers. I was born in Houston, raised in the San Fernando Valley
of Los Angeles, and spent much of my adult life in New York City. It was this move
to Liberty and small town America, a place and bucolic lifestyle completely
unfamiliar to me that triggered my new ideas about journalism.
As destiny would have it, driving on a back road in my Catskill neighborhood
in the spring of 2002, I spotted the BeeLine for sale in someone’s front yard. I
couldn’t resist the winking queen bee depicted on its awning or the alluring petite
size of this home on wheels. I bought it without hesitation for $800 after checking
out the gorgeous honey-colored birch wood interior and prominent white-flecked
Formica kitchen table. Sleeping in it one night, I had a vision of people gathering at
the table. And I thought why not do a radio show right here, inside the BeeLine?
15
Chapter 3: Performance Journalism
Storytelling is also theatre. Popular theatre is used for reflection and
learning. …If we combine street theatre with the idea of critical
public spaces as places for creating critical dissent dialogue, we can
come up with some exciting ideas for using contested spaces of public
squares and market places to begin the process of questioning.
— Margaret Ledwith and Jane Springett, “Participatory Practice”
From the very beginning Trailer Talk has been a performance. Attaching the
speakers to the back of the camper, making brownies, putting lawn chairs outside
and setting the kitchen table, I create a space in and around the trailer that is part of,
but different from, a public location. It’s an exhilarating feeling to have an audience,
to have people participate in what is always an experiment.
Figure 6. Trailer Talk: Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), Main
St., Skid Row. L to R, General Dogon, Sabrina Artel and Al Sabo, 3-8-12.
16
The stage(ing) of journalism has expanded to include, in fact, demand that
more of us share our voices every way we can. By working across disciplines,
Trailer Talk experiments with the potential of new kinds of expression from smaller
voices alongside those given more play from corporate media. The performance
journalism blueprint provides a platform to share dialogues, build narratives, and
support grassroots social change.
During a lecture in 2011 in evaluating the role and future of journalism,
media scholar Jenkins addressed issues about top-down hierarchies and the shift
toward collaboration impacting us socially across many disciplines. “Modern
activism is transmedia at its core, there’s a sense of global exchange” and “being
more powerful collectively” is part of the radical social shift.
9
It is exactly this shift
that interests me. I have been an advocate for building a journalistic model that
provides platforms for points of view from communities often ignored or de-valued
by mainstream media models. I advocate for giving other people voice, to do this I
had to create a new model. The model is getting in a trailer and going into
communities where people have no voice. Many times, they are talking about issues
that generally the mainstream press has not yet covered, such as fracking and
mountaintop removal. In my experience with Trailer Talk, time and again when
venturing into poorer communities, in particular, I found citizens who wanted to be
vocal and go public about injustices that were later borne out on a national scale. I
9
Roski School of Fine Arts USC. (2011, March 9). Lecture presented at the MFA Lecture Series
Henry Jenkins, Graduate Fine Arts Building. Retrieved from
http://roski.usc.edu/calendar/event/892542/mfa-lecture-series-henry-jenkins/
17
have wondered if it is a coincidence that people who are marginalized are so often
ignored? This is why Trailer Talk’s specific form of mobile based journalism is
important.
In the summer of 2003, I created the first Trailer Talk at the Junkyard
Cabaret at the Roxbury Art Center in upstate New York. With this these big
thoughts in mind: about the art of conversation and the attempt to sustain a dialogue
between people, about conversation embodying the root of cultural sustainability and
focusing on cultural democratic ideals through on site personal exchange, I set up.
Here are some of the additional goals:
1. To situate the show in and around the trailer.
2. To focus on interactivity and broadcast.
3. To use the kitchen table as a symbol of exchange and sharing.
4. To embody the live event and ephemerality of performance with the
collective experience of public conversations.
Philosopher, Jacques Rancière theorizes, “an emancipated community is a
community of narrators and translators.”
10
The collaborators are also the audience
and ‘audience’ in turn becomes a participant in the process of this journalistic model
that incorporates new methodologies and strategies.
At the Junkyard Cabaret, the BeeLine trailer was located in a courtyard of
the art center immediately outside the door to the performance space. I watched the
Junkyard Cabaret rehearsals throughout the day, researching the art event and
10
Rancière, J. (2009). The Emancipated Spectator. Verso.
18
subject of women, queerness and disposability. I wrote an introduction for the event
in the trailer, met the various performers and invited them to join me at the kitchen
table throughout the night. I plugged the trailer in, tested the equipment and began
my own reflection about women and junk, positioning the trailer and myself in the
middle of this conversation.
The Junkyard Cabaret audience arrived and peaking through the trailer’s
windows and doorway, they saw me performing as an interviewer talking to artist,
Peggy Shaw. The conversation, reflecting on the role of women’s work, the
invisibility and disposability of women’s labor and the human rights issues regarding
female sexuality, could be heard amplified through speakers outside. Some audience
members pushed up against the windows and stood in the doorway and to this degree
became active participants in Trailer Talk’s first process-based journalism event.
Here is an excerpt from the inaugural transcript:
Artel: What is junk? And how does it intercept with class, female identify,
and queerness? What does it signify? It is my pleasure to welcome Peggy
Shaw, who is with me right now in the trailer. Hi, Peggy.
Shaw: Hi, how are you?
Artel: I’m wondering if you could share with us what is junk, and why this
Junkyard Cabaret?
Shaw: First of all, I’m going to try not to use the word “old” or a “vintage,”
especially when it comes to describing myself, since I’m older than this 1965
trailer, in fact. I graduated from high school in 1961, so there you go.
I think junk is an aesthetic that, when that’s all one has, that’s what you use.
And you create from it, and you fill the space with new things that you make,
and that’s what I’ve done my whole life.
19
Artel: Is actually taking used things and kind of recycling them in the kind of
way to give them this kind of newness?
Shaw: Sorry. We’re a little distracted because there’s people walking ... it’s
great, there’s people walking around the trailer, looking in the windows ...
women and children and people waving at us. So if once in a while we lose
our concentration, it’s because there’s lot of viewers looking in the window
of the trailer.
11
The attention to individual ideas and its relationship to the specific site and
community functions to reflect back to the community and the 'public square' in
order to forge a more constructive, transparent and process-driven response. The use
of loud speakers and street transmission tempted participants to interact with the
issues and ideas addressed during the live events. The trailer itself is a symbol of
intervention and civic discourse, a replica of a home that reminds participants of the
active role of media and its intersection with our personal lives.
The homemade brownies or local treats shared at the kitchen table further
impact the kind of dialogic potentiality. The use of radio in this project is also
crucial. In contemplating the broadcasts the question of boundaries and the crossing
of cultural territory become relevant. What is the role of the transmitter and the
receiver?
As our voices echoed across the courtyard during the first Trailer Talk
performance, I immediately began to get enthusiastic and surprised responses from
strangers and friends, who stopped by to listen to the conversations and explore the
trailer. I realized that this was a live interaction and that providing a stage, a re-
11
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk: Junkyard Cabaret 2003. (n.d.). Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk.
Retrieved from http://itunes.apple.com/ug/podcast/sabrina-artels-trailer-talk/id278183770
20
imagining of public space for the purpose of building engagement around these
ideas, was a novel approach to getting the news.
Trailer Talk was born on that July evening in 2003.
21
Chapter 4: From the Mountaintop
We are learning that a community engaged is a community
empowered.
— Terry Tempest Williams, “Engagement “
Mountaintop Removal (MTR) mining begins when a mountain is clear cut,
the valuable forests, eco-diversity and land are dumped into the valleys, hollers and
streams below; the mountain is blasted with explosives and the coal seams extracted.
This destroys the land, poisons the water, and devastates communities with toxic
sludge and flooding. Whether it’s Mountaintop Removal, the Tar Sands, nuclear
power or fracking, these forms of extreme energy extraction methods can have
devastating impacts on the air, water, health and communities that surround them.
Why did I end up on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, about 33 miles
southeast of Charleston for three days and nights over July 4
th
weekend in 2008 in
the heart of coal country Mountaintop Removal (MTR) operations? I had driven for a
day and a half from Liberty for the Mountainkeepers Music Festival in West Virginia
to better understand what was happening to the citizens and environment in this
Mountaintop Removal Coal region.
12
I went knowing that my hypothesis of mobile
radio performance journalism would either all come together or fall apart in this
moment when a potentially explosive issue and the angst of a community had not yet
fully registered as significant to a broader public.
12
Keeper of the Mountains Foundation. (2012). Retrieved from
http://mountainkeeper.blogspot.com/p/meet-keeper-of-mountains-foundation.html
22
The Kayford Mountain Trailer Talk event is significant because of how we (I
was accompanied by two assistants, an experienced photojournalist friend from NYC
and a former intern of my congressman Maurice Hinchey), got to this site — a two-
day journey through four states from Liberty, NY, to the Appalachian Mountains of
West Virginia.
13
This story is the expression of a huge community effort by people in
my neighborhood that I didn’t even know yet, but who knew about Trailer Talk and
the support that the project has continued to be modeled on.
Here is the full story: In spring 2008, Pete Comstock, the founder of a local
school in Glen Spey in the Sullivan County Catskills, called and asked if I would
share Trailer Talk at an event hosted by his Homestead Montessori School at the
Pocono Environmental Education Center in Pennsylvania to raise awareness around
the issue of MTR. During this event, one of the speakers, citizen advocate, Larry
Gibson invited me to his family home on Kayford Mountain. And, since the topic of
shale gas extraction had recently become a major topic of conversation in my region,
I felt I needed to learn more about the issues around fossil fuel extraction. I leapt at
the chance to see for myself what living with MTR was like.
Comstock and his students organized a fundraiser to send me. The kids sold
handmade bracelets and painted gourds (see Appendix B). The passionate
commitment from these six and eight year-old kids to a cause 1300 miles away from
them continues to inspire my work today.
13
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (7-4,5,6-08). From the Mountaintop, Kayford, WV. Retrieved from
http://www.sabrinaartel.com/podcast/index.php
23
When I arrived on Kayford, Gibson was among the first to greet me. His
small stature belied a giant’s spirit. His stories of taking on the Massey Energy
Company, shared in his singing Appalachian intonations, were at first almost
indecipherable to my Northeastern ear. I leaned in close, as I did for most of the
conversations on the mountain over the next three days and nights, grateful for my
Texan roots that enabled me to begin to understand his poetic mountain cadence. The
purpose of this concert, according to Gibson, was to “show support for human rights,
health, and water rights, and basically everything that we have.” Gibson’s family and
his descendants have lived on Kayford Mountain for 235 years, and he has
spearheaded the effort to put his family land in trust to prevent it from being
purchased by the Massey Coal Company. I felt the weight of the struggles on the
mountaintop as I heard explosions beyond the ridge and wiped the dust from my
sweaty face in the humidity. Set up in the middle of the gathering -- potluck
happening around the trailer and dancing to the mountain music -- I felt a
tremendous responsibility to understand what MTR was doing to people and how I
could share their important stories. I asked Larry what life was like in the face of the
absolute destruction of his home?
Gibson: Okay. It was not about money in the first place, or I would have
never turned it into a land trust. It’s simply about saving a piece of our
culture, our way of life. ’Cause you can look what mountains we have left,
our serene, beautiful mountains. They’re actually a life vessel. One time
sitting on my mountain, I watched a guy shoot a bear with a bow, and he
didn’t kill it outright, and I heard that bear ... I heard that bear bawling and
crying because he was dying.
24
These mountains right here are our life vessel. They’re a life vessel. They
support all forms of life, all forms of life. I’m challenging people around the
world and will hear this here recording to come up with something that will
describe the death or the cry of a mountain when it’s dying. Maybe then
people will understand me, because I cannot describe it myself.
I know what it is; I know what it sounds like; but I cannot describe the death
of a mountain because it’s too tragic. There’s no way to do it. I can describe
the death of an animal or a bear but to describe the death of a mountain
simply by hearing 1,000 pounds of dynamite going off — yeah, that would
do it. That would do it.
14
I often cried as guest after guest shared one more gut wrenching story after
another with such generosity. Here I was a woman with an old trailer, not from a
major media outlet. I was an independent journalist with a tape recorder and three
microphones. But the very gesture of the trailer, the fact that I had come all this way
to let the citizens be heard and to amplify their stories, caught their attention and won
many hearts. The people that joined in trusted that I would honestly share their
stories.
I was a stranger on the mountaintop but was treated with care as if I was a
part of their community. This was the beauty of the exchange that can occur with this
model. I entered their territory but somehow with the framework of performance
journalism and that winking Queen Bee on the awning, the treats on the kitchen table
and the hours and — in this case — days spent earned their trust and built
relationships.
14
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (7-4,5,6-08). From the Mountaintop, Kayford, WV. Retrieved from
http://www.sabrinaartel.com/podcast/index.php
25
Figure 7. Trailer Talk: From L to R, The late Judy Bonds, Sabrina Artel and Larry
Gibson, Kayford Mountain, WV, 7-5-08 (Photo, Donna Binder)
Gibson’s story deeply inspired me to commit myself to remaining in his
community for three days and nights with the door of the trailer open for discourse. I
experienced what it was like, although briefly to have no drinkable water on the
mountain. That really woke me up. Larry Gibson felt that his cabin had been burned
down and his dog shot to death because of his stance against Massey Coal Company.
I had been warned that a journalist just before my visit there had his equipment
smashed and had been beaten up as he made his way to the ridge to document the
Mountaintop Removal Operations. Thankfully my visit to the site to document it was
non-violent. Lives were on the line. These things felt palpable.
26
Another visitor to Trailer Talk was a friend of Gibson’s who also was
involved in the movement to stop MTR. Rugged, lean and tall with deep lines of
worry and hard work etched on his face, Ed Wiley, a former employee of the Massey
Coal Company, joined me at the kitchen table. He very quietly related this stunning
story delivered with long pauses and deep sighs.
My granddaughter, she got sick at Marsh Fork Elementary. It really woke me
up to what I was doing and what the coal mining industry is doing to our
communities, doing to our future water system. And, they talk about “clean
coal technology” so much. People in America really need to know that
they’re being lied to. There is no such thing as “clean coal technology.”
Addressing issues around water contamination Wiley said:
This is your backyard, too. This is your water supply. This is your children’s
future water supply. The Appalachian Mountains as a whole, we are the
filter; we are the sponge, we are the filter, and we are the discharge. So,
everybody in America should be standing up and talking out against
mountaintop removal and what it’s doing to our communities and their future
water system around the nation… People shouldn’t wait for something bad to
happen before they wake up. All the things that I knew wrong about the
chemicals, the shortcuts we took on that site, and all the bad things that I
knew that I was part of and it really woke me up.
15
15
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (7-4,5,6-08). From the Mountaintop, Kayford, WV. Retrieved from
http://www.sabrinaartel.com/podcast/index.php
27
Figure 8. Trailer Talk: Ed Wiley, Kayford Mountain, WV, 7-5-08 (Photo, Donna
Binder)
It began to sink in what it meant to be in the heart of a violent coal country. A
total of four half-hour radio Trailer Talk broadcasts aired from this Kayford
Mountain Event in 2008. The series originally aired on WJFF Radio Catskill in
Jeffersonville, NY, and podcast on the web and iTunes. As the Trailer Talk half hour
weekly radio show was picked up by additional radio stations, the pieces from
Kayford Mountain were updated and broadcast on six more stations across the
United States, in addition to being posted on the Trailer Talk website. Local
newspaper coverage included an article about the trip and series in the River
Reporter.
28
Reporter, Sandy Long wrote about the visit, “Once there, she [Artel] found a
certain resonance with an issue closer to home — the gas drilling speculation that
has swept the once-peaceable rural communities on both sides of the Upper
Delaware River and stirred intense controversy.”
16
Photographs and commentary
were also shared on the website, in addition to continued dissemination via social
media tools and mailings. People in the Catskill, Delaware River Basin and
Northeast Pennsylvania expressed appreciation for the series that connected their
community and current issues to that of the one on Kayford Mountain in West
Virginia.
It was also on my ride up the mountain, BeeLine in tow, past coal trucks, box
cars and the former town purchased and plowed under by the coal operation, that I
realized that the exploration and production of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing
(fracking) was connected to these and other similar communities — including my
own in the Catskills — and that I had an imperative to communicate, document and
distribute these Trailer Talk conversations as much as I possibly could.
I knew that I needed to find out more about shale gas extraction and what
“natural gas drilling” really meant for my home. I knew very little about natural gas
and nothing about fracking yet my stay on Kayford Mountain had opened my eyes to
our region’s future. The only difference is that instead of large companies using
dynamite to blow tops off of mountains, they would be using water, sand and
16
Sandy Long. (2008, July 24). Catskills to Appalachia: Trailer Talk travels, Sabrina Artel discovers a
shared sense of concern at the true costs of energy extraction. The River Reporter. Narrowsburg, NY.
29
chemicals to break apart the earth a mile beneath the surface, also known as fracking.
I set out to research and investigate this complex issue. How could I use my
journalism and performance skills to share what was happening in our backyards?
Being witness to the death of a mountain on Kayford ultimately inspired
Trailer Talk’s Frack Talk Marcellus Shale Water Project (The Shale Project) which
continues to evolve four years later.
30
Chapter 5: Into the Frack (A Fracking Revolution Under My Feet)
Mankind's been carried to this point. All of our technology, all of our
development, everything — it's been perfect. This concentrated
energy has been a gift to carry us to this very moment, and this very
moment has given us the technology that we need to leave those fossil
fuels behind.
— Mark Ruffalo, Trailer Talk, July 2, 2010
When I returned from Kayford Mountain I was changed. It is one thing to
read about what has happened and another to meet the people impacted face to face.
Little did I know when I moved to Liberty that I would live on top of the
Marcellus Shale. Directly under my home in the Sullivan County Catskills are the
desired gas reserves that the oil and gas industry have targeted for drilling and
extraction. Communities living on shale are the center of The Shale Project. The
Marcellus Shale in the Catskills of New York extends as far as West Virginia. Other
shale rock formations, including Utica, Eagle-Ford, Barnett and Monterey, are either
being fracked or are targeted throughout the United States and globally for this form
of extreme shale gas extraction. The Shale Gas Play, as it’s called by the gas
industry, is a global initiative to extract gas and it is anything but playful.
Trailer Talk has always included me as a participant along with the guests,
but the fact that I now fully understood that my own home was affected by fracking,
pushed the performance model forward and expanded the stage of discourse.
Fracking for gas is an issue that touches everyone’s quality of life and because of
that The Shale Project is the culmination of other subjects of Trailer Talk that have
31
included, liberty, women’s rights, housing and homelessness, LGBTQ rights, animal
rights, family farms, climate change, arts activism and more. The investigation of
why communities come together and strategies of engagement have been activated in
numerous ways when fracking came to town.
This explosive issue impacts everyone, providing Trailer Talk with the
unfolding experiment of performance journalism and how it adapts to the
communities it is located in. These experiments are occurring in numerous ways, on
the physical stage of the trailer itself through the live events, the radio broadcasts that
transmit across the country, and through social media communication via the
website/blog, Facebook and Twitter. The social media tools are providing the
interaction between the on the street dialogues and those happening on the
Interactive site where people can record their voices, upload photos and share stories,
adding to the living archive (see Appendix C).
With The Shale Project I have also become a regular contributor on the news
site, Alternet.org and have been invited to share the live Trailer Talk event in various
places, including Yellow Springs Ohio last September. I was hosted by an art group
and was located on the main street of the town (see Appendix D).
The issues faced by communities living on shale are complex, because
fracking typically profits some people financially while it devastates the land and
lives of others. Relationships among citizens are severely tested in towns such as
Dimock, PA, where fracking happens seemingly unchecked or where it is
vociferously and publicly debated as in the state of New York (and many others
32
states). People have been both mobilized and fractured like the fracturing happening
underground that blasts the rock formations with massive explosives under
extremely high pressure. I have seen screaming arguments between citizens and oil
and gas industry reps. I have witnessed sharp verbal attacks between once friendly
neighbors who now find themselves on different sides of this issue.
Craig and Julie Sautner have been at the center of the debate about fracking.
They live in Dimock, which is the poster child for fracking complaints. They have
not had water since 2008 when they feel that fracking contaminated it. The water
coming out of their tap from their well is undrinkable. They have been at the center
of disputes and studies since drilling began in their town. The Sautners joined me for
Trailer Talk in July 2010 in Beaverkill, NY.
Craig said:
We moved there in March of '08, and we didn't think anything about it, and
then we started noticing trucks going up and down the road -- all the traffic,
and then that's when we had a land man approach us, and he said he wanted
us to sign a lease. And he said, "Don't worry -- all the leases are the same."
He said, "All your neighbors are signing, and if you don't sign, we're just
going to take the gas out from underneath you anyway." And we knew, you
know ... so, what choice did we really have? So, we decided to sign the lease.
But nobody ever told us any of the things ... any of the wrongs that could
happen. We were never informed.
Our life is ... has been turned upside-down ... If you don't have fresh water,
how can you survive? You can't survive without fresh water.
Julie shared:
Not only was our water dirty, we also had methane in our water, so they also
added a methane remover down in the basement to try to remove the
methane, which was not working as well. So, to make a long story short, the
33
DEP took the system offline, and the wells ... Our lives are basically on hold.
So, here we sit, being still invaded.
When I ask them if their town has changed since drilling began? Julie said this,
It went from residential to industrial. So now we live in an industrial city, I
guess you would say. It's “Gas City.” It's no longer our home. We haven’t
been living our normal lives for two years.
Craig responded:
And that’s why we’re out speaking out now, because we want to educate
people, to let them know what we went through so they can make a wise
decision instead of a hasty decision, and before it’s too late. If you wrong
something, how do you right a wrong? You can’t with water. Like I said
before, I can live without gas; I can't live without water. We have to have our
water. I mean, it’s a precious commodity that we've got to; we'd better protect
it. We have to protect it.
And we have constitutional rights, too, you know, in the U.S. and the state,
for clean water and clean air.
Julie added:
They’ve taken that away from us; they definitely have.
17
17
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (2011, February 10). Trailer Talk Julie and Craig Sautner, What the
Frack? Trailer Talk’s Frack Talk Shale Project. Retrieved from http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-
talk-shale-project/?p=159
34
Figure 9. Trailer Talk: Julie and Craig Sautner with ‘water’ from their well, Catskill
Mountainkeeper Barnfest, Beaverkill, NY, 7-31-10
35
I heard about landmen (leasing agents) representing the oil and gas
companies sending letters to residents and knocking on their doors. For some this
was good news offering them the potential to make money by leasing their land. But
for others questions about the safety of this unfamiliar technique trumped all other
possibilities, including the apparent promise of getting rich quick. The movement to
demand regulations in New York started in 2008. Since then it has spread
internationally and nationally. Primary concerns are being asked about the process
itself, waste water removal, accidents, health, air and water standards, property
values, lawsuits and buyouts and self-determination of townships.
Only days before I left for Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, I took Trailer
Talk to the parking lot of Liberty High School. That June 27
th
night, I had set up and
invited people to join me at the kitchen table, for the first informational Forum in
Sullivan County on Gas Drilling. It was co-hosted by Catskill Mountainkeeper (a
newly formed local environmental advocacy group with a mission to protect the
seven counties of New York Catskills) and the Sullivan County Commissioner of
Planning and Environmental Management. Hundreds of people came to learn more
about drilling. Speakers from Wyoming and Colorado were invited to share stories of
leasing land, issues for towns, truck traffic and health impacts as a result of
horizontal high volume hydraulic fracturing.
The term fracking was just becoming familiar, although there was still much
to learn. Tensions were high in Liberty that night. Property owners were being
approached to lease their land for potential profit. This was the American fantasy of
36
striking it rich like the Beverly Hillbillies and all of a sudden our region was being
targeted for the massive gas reserves underfoot. I stayed well after the speakers and
organizers went home as friends, neighbors and residents, farmers, doctors and
teachers from the area spoke, questioned and shared their thoughts about it. Could
this situation be safe and even beneficial for some?
I continued to set up Trailer Talk in different neighborhoods in the Catskill
region, producing live events and radio documentaries with people impacted. The
viewpoints were complex and the tensions were beginning to rise and a movement to
expose and mobilize citizens against perceived social injustices organized quickly. I
spoke with farmers, teachers, elected officials, gas industry representatives, people
who had leased their land or wanted to, those opposed, landmen whose job it is to
convince people to lease their land, the former head of the New York Department of
Conservation (DEC), one of the founders of the Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), the nation’s largest environmental advocacy group, neighbors and
hundreds of others during this continuing project.
18
Viewpoints varied. Norm Sutherland, a Highway Superintendent from
Highland, NY, said to me about fracking, when I set up on October 28, 2009 at the
first Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) hearing at the community
18
Sabrina Artel. (2003). Trailer Talk’s Frack Talk Shale Project. Retrieved from
http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-talk-shale-project/
37
college, “We have to do something. It’s here. It’s a chance. It’s better than nothing.
What else do we have?”
19
Charlie Hallock, a Highway Superintendent from another Catskill town saw it
this way when he joined the kitchen table also at the DEC hearing:
The working man has been paying forever around here and it’s just come to
the point where you can’t afford to live here anymore and something has to
be done. We’re sitting on a gold mine and it’s here — if it can be done
correctly.
“These companies come in here and they’re the 300 pound gorilla and they
just run all over your rights. They run over everything about your way of life.,”
stated the former Mayor of Dish Texas, Calvin Tillman, on our joint visit from the
Catskills to Dimock, in the winter of 2009.
20
Tillman and his family have since left
Dish because they felt that the increasing drill sites of fracking were causing severe
health issues in his two young sons.
In recent news have been the debates about this in South Africa, Australia,
Bulgaria and France, the Czech Republic where these countries have either a ban or a
moratorium on fracking.
21
My state of New York was the first state to impose a
19
Sabrina Artel. (2009, October 28). Shale Project. Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. Loch Sheldrake, NY.
Retrieved from http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-talk-shale
project/?s=DEC+Loch+Sheldrake&submit.x=0&submit.y=0
20
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (2011, January 25). From Dish, TX to Dimock, PA. Retrieved from
http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-talk-shale-project/?p=604
21
Lineham List of Fracking Bans or Moratoriums / Gas trader quits. (n.d.). Arlington TX Barnett
Shale Blogger. Retrieved June 20, 2012, from
http://barnettshalehell.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/lineham-list-of-fracking-bans-or-moratoriums-and-
its-growing/
38
moratorium.
22
With the release of Governor Cuomo’s announcement on June 15th
that he intends to allow fracking in the Southern tier another layer of the debate is
amplified.
23
It is estimated that thirty-four states in the USA that are currently being
fracked with an aggressive move in California that is just now being investigated.
24
Earthquakes as a result of hydro-fracturing have also been reported in Ohio and
Arkansas.
25
The EPA is currently undergoing an investigation into the impacts of
fracking and found that the water in Pavilion, WY shows signs of increased
methane.
26
Dimock, PA a once sleepy rural town has become an industrialized center
of fracking and gas operations. It has become known as the ground zero of what can
go wrong with fracking operations and the relationship between neighbors.
Once pastoral small towns have been violently disrupted by shale gas
extraction zones and their farmland compromised, if not entirely destroyed. Fracking
22
Kate Sinding. (2010, December 10). NY Becomes First State to Impose a Moratorium on Hydraulic
Fracturing. Switchboard Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog. Retrieved from
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ksinding/ny_becomes_first_state_to_impo.html
23
Hakim, D. (2012, June 13). Hydrofracking Under Cuomo Plan Would Be Restricted to a Few
Counties. The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/nyregion/hydrofracking-under-cuomo-plan-would-be-restricted-
to-a-few-counties.html
24
Artel, S. (2012, June 11). Fracking Los Angeles: What Life Is Like on the Country’s Biggest Urban
Oilfield. AlterNet. Retrieved from
http://www.alternet.org/fracking/155829/fracking_los_angeles%3A_what_life_is_like_on_the_countr
y%27s_biggest_urban_oilfield
25
Fracking-Linked Earthquakes Spurring State Regulations. (n.d.). Businessweek.com. Retrieved
June 20, 2012, from http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-20/fracking-linked-earthquakes-
spurring-state-regulations
26
Feds Link Water Contamination to Fracking for the First Time. (n.d.). ProPublica. Retrieved June
20, 2012, from http://www.propublica.org/article/feds-link-water-contamination-to-fracking-for-first-
time
39
requires anywhere from 50,000 to 10 million gallons of water per fracked well,
depending on the kind of rock formation and location, so the threat to the water
supply is a critical one. Debate rages over whether the aquifer is being destroyed
and the water used will become toxic waste. The United States Environmental
Protection Agency estimated in 2010 that “70 to 140 billion gallons of water are used
to fracture 35,000 wells in the United States each year”.
27
With a worldwide water shortage, these are serious risks that could threaten
our future on the planet. On May 18, 2012, Vermont became the first state to pass
legislation with the house of reps to ban the practice.
28
Both the New Jersey
Assembly and Senate proposed bills to on June 14th to ban fracking in the state that
already has a moratorium.
29
Assemblywoman Grace Spencer, chairwoman of the
Assembly panel committee said, “All of the evidence we’ve seen to date has shown
27
EPA. (2011). Draft Plan to Study the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing on Drinking Water
Resources (Study). Retrieved from
http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/P100DG8R.txt?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index
=2011%20Thru%202015&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&
Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&UseQField=&IntQField
Op=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A\ZYFILES\INDEX%20DATA\11THRU15\TXT\
00000003\P100DG8R.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h|-
&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Displa
y=p|f&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&
MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1
28
Andrew Chow. (2012, May 23). Reuters. Retrieved from
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/tagblogsfindlawcom2012-injured-
idUS365234324120120523
29
James M. O’Neill. (2012, June 14). NJ Assembly panel advances bill to ban treatment, disposal of
fracking waste. News. Retrieved from
http://www.northjersey.com/news/Bill_to_ban_treatment_disposal_of_fracking_waste_moves_forwar
d.html
40
fracking to be a reckless endangerment to our environment and to the health of the
general public.”
30
The procedure has caused great concern for many reasons, including the
chemicals injected into the wells for drilling, which some residents in the fracked
neighborhoods claim taint nearby drinking water.
31
Residents in the drilling regions
are reporting complaints about polluted water, adverse health impacts and air
quality.
32
Additionally, broken relationships in communities and increasing tensions
are noted as drilling attempts are made across the country.
The grassroots organizing to educate the public and act to protect their homes
has been huge with New York State leading the fight to stop fracking unless it can be
done safely. Trailer Talk’s Shale Project has been in on-site dialogues with
communities in the Catskill region of New York and NYC, in addition to
Pennsylvania and Ohio since the beginning of 2008.
33
On-line dialogues and
conversations via the blog site and social media tools have happened with people all
over the country.
30
Seth Augenstein. (2012, June 14). 200 rally in Trenton against fracking coming to N.J. The Star-
Ledger. Retrieved from
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/06/200_rally_in_trenton_against_f.html
31
Halliburton. (2012, June 20). Hydraulic Fracturing 101. Retrieved from
http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/hydraulic_fracturing/fracturing_101.html
32
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (2010). Trailer Talk Julie and Craig Sautner, What the Frack? Frack
Talk Shale Project. Beaverkill, NY. Retrieved from http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-talk-shale-
project/?p=159
33
Sabrina Artel. (n.d.). Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk Frack Talk Shale Project. Trailer Talk. Retrieved
from http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-talk-shale-project/
41
In 2005, the Bush/Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the
Safe Drinking Water Act, otherwise known as the Halliburton Loophole. Oil and gas
Companies are not required to disclose the proprietary chemicals used to “frack” a
well during hydraulic fracturing. In 1974 Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water
Act to ensure safe drinking water, absent from manmade and naturally occurring
contaminants.
The EPA states:
The purpose of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is to protect the quality
of drinking water in the United States, including all waters actually or
potentially designated for drinking water use, whether from above ground or
underground sources. It does not regulate private wells providing water for
fewer than 25 individuals.
34
The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act)
is a house bill co-sponsored by ten-term Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) of
New York to repeal the Halliburton Loophole and require the chemicals used by the
natural gas industry to be disclosed.
In a Trailer Talk conversation with Congressman Maurice Hinchey on
September 5, 2010, he said about fracking:
We need to protect people from what is unsafe. And actually, it’s even more
than unsafe. It can be very tragic. It can have a very serious effect on people’s
health and safety, and on their property.
It can downgrade the quality of their property considerably. The situation has
to do with the way in which they engage this frack drilling for the natural gas.
34
EPA. (2012). Natural Gas Extraction-Hydraulic Fracturing. United States Environmental Protection
Agency. Informational. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracture/
42
Now, natural gas is, you know, very good if it can be obtained easily and
effectively without any injury, then it’s fine. But it should not be drilled for
and obtained, in ways in which chemical materials are used, large quantities
of these chemical materials are used, and there’s no responsibility for the
injection of these chemical materials, because the chemical materials in many
instances, as we know, have contaminated water supplies.
There is a situation right nearby, just across, just across the river here, in
Pennsylvania [Dimock], where 14 water supplies were contaminated as a
result of one particular fracking. And a lot of other places, in other states
around the country.
35
Figure 10. Trailer Talk: Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Gasland Film Screening,
Callicoon, NY, 9-5-10
35
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (2010, September 5).Congressman Maurice Hinchey FRAC Act and
the Environment. Multi-Media Cultural. Retrieved from http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-talk-
shale-project/?p=895
43
In 2008, I parked the trailer on the lawn adjacent to an outdoor stage where
Josh Fox’s film Gasland was screening as part of the Rooftop Films tour. The event
was coordinated by Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, a volunteer grassroots
organization that was formed in 2008 and Catskill Mountainkeeper, the
Environmental Organization whose mission is it to “Protect the Catskills”.
It was a warm Labor Day Weekend night, there was fall chill already in the
air and the grass was filled with picnickers of those concerned and activated to stop
unsafe fracking in their community. Tables were set up from the various
environmental groups and local artists were sharing their works. A moratorium had
been fought for and won until May of 2011 and the resistance to the gas industry had
manifest in the delay of drilling in New York. I arrived around 2 p.m. and invited
people to join the traveling kitchen table until midnight.
The second Trailer Talk gas-drilling event that followed our participation at
the first forum on gas drilling sponsored by Catskill Mountainkeeper in Liberty was
the first Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy fundraiser in North Branch, NY, in western
Sullivan County on October 12, 2008. Catskill Citizens was a newly formed
volunteer organization that organized around their concerns about local shale gas
extraction. I had heard about this newly formed volunteer citizens’ organization and
wanted to find out more about it and what had happened since that first Liberty
forum at the end of June. I spoke to Victoria Lesser the proprietor of the North
Branch Inn who was hosting the event and we arranged for me to pull the trailer on
the Main Street in front of the Inn.
44
The Shale Project has continued and combines the live events, radio
broadcasts, video pieces and interactive site that provide an archive of living on the
shale and the complex decisions being made by people across the country. The issue
challenges ideas around democracy itself and the direction of the social system.
When I began the project, much less was known about the practices. It’s been
through research, mobilization and conversations across platforms that much about
the dangers and threats to community relationships have been exposed.
Today I find myself in another epicenter of fracking, standing on the shale in
Los Angeles, not only the city where I was raised but where the debates are
escalating about what has been happening in California, what has been regulated or
not and what dangers people have facing in the drilling zones. Fracking has been
utilized throughout the state for oil extraction.
Over 600 wells were hydraulically fractured in California in 2011 according
to the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA).
36
In research by the
Environmental Working Group (EWG), they state, “The state’s failure to confront
reality is hardly surprising, since the Division of Oil and Gas of the California
Department of Conservation admits that it makes no attempt to monitor, track or
regulate hydraulic fracturing in any way.”
37
36
Western States Petroleum Association. (2012, June). WSPA. Company. Retrieved from
http://www.wspa.org/
37
Environmental Working Group. (2012, June). What you need to know about fracking.
Environmental research. Retrieved from http://www.ewg.org/gas-drilling-and-fracking
45
The one thousand acre Inglewood Oilfield is the largest contiguous urban oil
field in the United States. Three years ago because of my work with The Shale
Project, I was contacted by a resident of Baldwin Hills, one of the neighborhoods
adjacent to the Inglewood Oilfield to speak to people there about the issues. I have
been researching the situation in Los Angeles since then and for the last year I have
been visiting wells and drill sites in the city, meeting people in citizen coalitions who
are demanding more information and disclosure about oil and gas production where
they live.
Sally Hampton has lived in Baldwin Hills for 31 years. I asked her how living
adjacent to the oilfield is impacting her life? She said:
Smelling pollution from the oil fields is stressful because you don't know
what is going into your lungs. Too many of my neighbors have gotten
cancers and lung problems. Many have died. My own husband was diagnosed
with cancer last year and I have had chronic health problems the last eight to
ten years. I have come not to trust my regulators to properly regulate the oil
and gas industry.
38
Active oil wells are throughout the city and have become sites of
entertainment, leisure, and education like the contested Beverly Hills High School
well. Covered up by parking lots, housing developments, next to hospitals, shopping
centers, these wells are such an embedded part of the landscape of the city that it's
easy to assume everything is safe while picnicking next to La Brea Tar Pits. This
issue of the proposed Inglewood Oilfield expansion connects the city of Los Angeles
38
Sabrina Artel’s Trailer Talk. (2012, June 11). Fracking Los Angeles: What Life Is Like on the
Country’s Biggest Urban Oilfield. Alternet. Retrieved from
http://www.alternet.org/fracking/155829/fracking_los_angeles%3A_what_life_is_like_on_the_countr
y%27s_biggest_urban_oilfield
46
to the other locations across the country and globally who are debating this complex
situation.
It is exactly that loss of trust that Hampton discusses, the silencing and the
damage being experienced by communities that Trailer Talk’s project continues to
explore, investigate and share with audience participants. These audiences are
invited to participate by sharing their own perspectives as the layers of this issue and
others are reflected back to others across platforms for continued participation.
What started as a local conversation in New York has become a massive
resistance movement. The tireless and imaginative grassroots effort continues to
galvanize the anti-fracking movement into an assertion of community, citizen
journalism and resilience grows as do the escalating debates about people’s lives and
the threats to democracy felt by many communities on all sides of this ever
encroaching possibility. This debate that I have put myself into the middle of has
come to represent nothing less than civil rights.
As the project continues to evolve, social media has also become a huge force
for sharing information, curation and social change, interacting with the on-site local
events. These words of journalist Christiane Amanpour during her USC
Commencement Speech on May 11, 2012 succinctly expressed why I feel it is
imperative to build community conversations and to provide the multi-media site as
a home for the living archive. She said, “There is not always a balance. We have to
train ourselves to look for and find the truth. Our golden rule is objectivity but
objectivity shouldn’t be confused with neutrality.”
47
Chapter 6: The Public Square
Yes, we have to give every side a fair hearing but that does not mean
creating false neutrality or false equivalence. …If you do that you are
then unfortunately an accomplice.
— Christiane Amanpour, USC Commencement Speech, May 11, 2012
Ever since the purchase in 2002 of that little faded trailer, built in Elkhardt,
Indiana, “trailer capital of the world,” I have investigated how to include the camper
and its portable kitchen table as a new model of journalism. From the first Trailer
Talk event in 2003, I have continued to formulate ways to expand that format and
also explore the role of broadcast journalism as an artistic practice. Or is it the other
way around?
The exciting difference now is that the journalist is a facilitator and engaged
participant in the process of the product. That product is no longer static or located in
only one place, but has a life that has broken out of the traditional journalistic top-
down institutions. It’s a stage for sharing and making cultural items and we, as
journalists have to aggregate, curate, facilitate and produce content. The job of
journalists is not to produce endless amounts of content with our name attached, but
rather to create discussions and forums for others to participate in. It is the framing
of the discussion and creating platforms (both on and off-line) for building
community. Finding ways for our community, the one that forms around a subject to
have a voice is essential. In his book Convergence: Culture Where Old and New
Media Collide, Henry Jenkins asserts that:
48
Convergence does not depend on any specific delivery mechanism. Rather,
convergence represents a paradigm shift-a move from medium-specific
content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the
increased interdependence of communications systems, toward multiple ways
of accessing media content, toward ever more complex relations between top-
down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture.
39
This collaborative model of journalism privileges the aesthetics of
relationship and dialogue. As art theorist Grant Kester says in Conversation Pieces,
Community and Communication in Modern Art, “Conversation becomes an integral
part of the work itself. It is reframed as an active, generative process that can help us
speak and imagine beyond the limits of fixed identities, official discourse, and the
perceived inevitability of partisan conflict.”
40
This kind of conversation seeks to
take place in the inter-spaces, gaps, borders, or liminal spaces in the social fabric of
our culture.
I have a clearer understanding of the histories of media and the
methodologies for practicing multi-media process based journalism. The germination
of ideas about audience and journalism’s participants are compelling. This expansion
reverberates with the goals of journalism to make information available, to guide and
to serve a public, to reveal histories and stories and to share experiences of our lives.
During this time of journalism’s re-discovery I am grateful to be a part of the
discourse with my performance journalism and to find more ways to share this
39
Henry Jenkins. (2006). Convergence Culture Where Old and New Media Collide. New York and
London: New York University Press. p. 254.
40
Grant Kester. (2004). Conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art.
University of California Press. p. 8.
49
engaged amplified journalism with others by the staging of conversations and re-
engaging public space.
Figure 11. From the outro of Trailer Talk’s weekly radio show: “I’m Sabrina Artel,
coming to you from the kitchen table from somewhere out there on the road. Please
join us at: www.trailertalk.net.”
50
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Artel’s Trailer Talk.
Arte, Sabrina. (2003-2012). Trailer Talk website. http://www.trailertalk.net.
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Workshop. Baldwin Hills, CA.
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53
Appendix A: Trailer Talk’s Secret Brownie Recipe
Figure A.1. Trailer Talk’s Secret Brownie Recipe
2 Eggs, local or organic. If you know the hens and they’re happy, excellent.
Egg-replacer can be used instead for vegan brownies.
¾-cup sugar (organic turbinado best as it adds a rich flavor).
1-teaspoon vanilla (experiment with Bourbon, Madagascar etc.).
½-cup butter melted (vegan butter or grapeseed oil can be used instead).
3/4 cup ground chocolate.
2/3-cup flour (organic if possible).
1/4 teaspoon baking powder.
1/4 teaspoon sea salt.
½ Bag of dark chocolate chips per batch.
54
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Using a spoon, stir eggs with sugar and vanilla; add butter.
3. Sift Ground Chocolate with flour, baking powder and salt.
4. Stir into egg mixture and add chocolate chips.
5. Spread into generously greased 8-inch square pan.
6. Bake 20-minutes-ish.
7. Makes 20 brownies. Enjoy and share.
55
Appendix B: Fundraiser for Trailer Talk’s Kayford Mountain Trip
Figure B.1. Fundraiser for Trailer Talk’s Kayford Mountain, WV trip, Homestead
School, Glen Spey, NY, 6-28-08
56
Appendix C: Trailer Talk’s Frack Talk Shale Water
Project Website
Figure C.1. Trailer Talk’s Frack Talk Shale Water Project Interactive Blogsite,
Interact Section, www.trailertalk.net
57
Appendix D: Trailer Talk Visits Yellow Springs, Ohio
Figure D.1. Trailer Talk was hosted by the Nonstop Art Institute to share The Shale
Project for two days on the Main St of Yellow Springs, Ohio, 9-2 & 9-3-11
Abstract (if available)
Linked assets
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Dancing a legacy: movement in the wake of the Greensboro Massacre
Asset Metadata
Creator
Artel, Sabrina
(author)
Core Title
Trailer talk: performance journalism staging conversations and re-engaging public space
School
Annenberg School for Communication
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Specialized Journalism
Publication Date
07/30/2012
Defense Date
07/02/2012
Publisher
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Tag
activism,audio pieces,avant-garde theatre,Catskills,community engagement,community radio,conceptual art,convergence theories,digital platforms,environmental justice,extreme fossil fuels,fracking,hydro-fracturing,installation,interviews,living archive,Marcellus shale,mobile journalism,mountaintop removal,multimedia,natural gas drilling,neighborhood micro journalism,new journalism,OAI-PMH Harvest,oil and gas exploration and production,oral history,participatory practice,performance art,performance journalism,public conversations,public discourse,public practice,public space,radio broadcast,radio transmission,site-based practice,social media tools,social practice,travel trailer
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committee chair
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committee member
), Page, Tim (
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)
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Tags
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Catskills
community engagement
community radio
conceptual art
convergence theories
digital platforms
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extreme fossil fuels
fracking
hydro-fracturing
installation
living archive
Marcellus shale
mobile journalism
mountaintop removal
multimedia
natural gas drilling
neighborhood micro journalism
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oil and gas exploration and production
participatory practice
performance art
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public conversations
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site-based practice
social media tools
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