Washburn Students Participate in Northern Spark

This weekend, students from Washburn High School will participate in an art installation on war and conflict at the Northern Spark festival, a participatory art event taking place at various locations around the Twin Cities.

The festival begins on June 4 at dusk and lasts until June 5 at dawn, and includes more than 150 local and national artists. The Washburn Students will participate in MIA Inside/Out: Battle of Everyouth which takes place at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts from 10 p.m. until Midnight on Saturday. The project is headed up by Iranian-American experimental artist Ali Momeni and Minneapolis-based artist Jenny Schmid.  

Printmaker and Animator Schmid said that she and Momeni, who both work at the University of Minnesota’s Studio Art Department, had wanted to do a project about war, and specifically about adults making decisions about sending children to war. “We wanted to approach the topic in a poetic and artistic way,” Schmid said. The artists began by exploring Persian miniatures from the medieval era, creating a diorama using the miniature’s influence.  

Schmid and Momeni approached the Minneapolis Institute of Arts about doing the project for Northern Spark, and through the museum they learned that Washburn High School students would be studying a similar topic over the course of the spring semester. “There’s been a synergy around these ideas,” Schmid said.

Around 90 ninth graders in Washburn’s Honors English, Honors Geography and Studio Art classes have been studying a unit called Children and Armed Conflict. The curriculum, led by teachers Brian Perkins (Geography), Nancy Hinz (Studio Art) and Katie Alleback (English) includes reading the graphic novels Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi about the author’s experiences growing up in Iran during the Iranian revolution, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman about the life of his grandfather, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust. They also watched the independent film Anna’s Playground, about a group of children in an unidentified war-torn country, and listened to the radio documentary Ghetto Life 101.

Leroy Miles, one of the students at Washburn, said that he could identify with the discrimination in Persepolis. Paige Thomas, another student, said she could relate to the topic of youth and violence. “In my past, that was something I was involved with,” Thomas said. 

With the artists, the students have been learning about combining art and technology. Schmid said that in a way, the students were more comfortable using technology than adults typically are. Schmid was also surprised by how aware the students are of controversial contemporary issues. “They are so perceptive about things like borders and war,” she said.

The installation has a number of different elements to it.  There’s a diorama, which uses architecture made up of miniature forms from Persia and live video projections, which are also recorded and manipulated by the artists. Thirteen of the 90 Washburn students who did the residency with the artists will be present on Saturday participating in the interactive performance element of the installation.

The students will be asking people questions that they have written themselves, and either recording the facial expressions of the visitors as they react, or facilitating visitors’ response through drawing or writing.

“I’m really nervous,” said Paige Thomas. “I’m a social person, but I don’t just go up to people.”

The students will be working in pairs. Some of the questions that they will be asking include:  When does faith become obsession? How is morality opinion? When does pride become arrogance? Ninth grader Meg Adams said it was difficult to come up with the questions.  “It’s hard to get a big reaction, where someone has to think,” she said.  

During the residency, Ali Momeni spoke with the students about the power they have as teenagers. Ninth grader Kevin Kane said he was very surprised when Momeni said that.  

The Northern Spark festival won’t be the end of the project. Washburn will have its own public art installation at the school in a couple of weeks, inspired by the students’ work with Schmid and Momeni.  And Schmid said she and Momeni are still talking about ways that the project can continue. The students are all for it.  “I want to take this to the next level,” said Leroy Miles.