Artist Statement

The BeltLine Chronicles is a 68-page poem honoring the living history of spaces along the Atlanta BeltLine. The poem draws inspiration from Lord Byron’s epic adventure poem “Don Juan,” and invokes a broad array of famous literary quests, from Homer’s “The Odyssey” and Dante the Pilgrim’s
“Divine Comedy” all the way up to Toni Morrison’s Paradise and Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte.

For the purposes of The BeltLine Chronicles, the BeltLine is an integral space, composed of eight subareas that are both autonomous and interconnected. The BeltLine Chronicles remind the reader/viewer of the many borders that we cross as we move through the BeltLine spaces and the great efforts that have been made by Ryan Gravel and the multitude of funders, visionaries, and developers who are bringing this dream to life.

The narrator of the poem is an enthusiastic and sweet poet named after George Gordon, Lord Byron. He invokes histories associated with BeltLine spaces and takes note of the people he sees along his journey. He also describes existing art installations, performances by BeltLine artists (both formal and informal), and emotions stirred by the amazing BeltLine environment. Along the way, George calls attention to issues of social justice and historical memory, while advocating for a more just future inspired by the ambitions associated with Atlanta’s “emerald necklace.” To that end, George recalls inspiring writings and utterances by the likes of Frederick Law Olmsted, W.E.B. DuBois, Ella Josephine Baker, Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, Harry Belafonte, Aretha Franklin, John Lewis, Shirley Franklin, and Stacey Abrams, who have envisioned a better future for Atlanta, America, and the world.

The BeltLine Chronicles is published alongside original artworks by Susan Ker-Seymer and Lauren McKee, and segments of it are being mounted along the Beltline in the form of verses and artworks from the project. The project is also featured on the art and border crossing site called Contours Collaborations, which Barsky developed in collaboration with MIT’s Media Lab, Knowledge Futures Group, and the MIT Press. The BeltLine Chronicles is the second artistic project created for Contours Collaborations, which is devoted to the representation of border-crossing through mixed-media artistic projects.

The BeltLine Chronicles will also be performed twice in the fall of 2023 by Ismail bin Conner, and once again in the spring of 2024 in the company of a group of dancers from the Kennesaw State University Department of Dance, choreographed by Marsha Barsky.

In its current state of construction and evolution, the BeltLine remains open to new stories, and new opportunities, of which the Beltline Chronicles represent but one unifying and uplifting example.

 

Artist Bio

Robert F. Barsky is a Professor of Humanities and Law at Vanderbilt University and a current Guggenheim Fellow (2022-2023).