Good Bones

About

Good Bones was a multimedia outdoor performance of shadow puppetry and projections that celebrated everyday stories of perseverance and evolution connected by one Detroit building.

As Detroit’s resurgence is focused downtown and led by people of means, the rich histories of neighborhoods – and neighbors – continue to be erased by foreclosures, demolitions and deterioration. Artist Shoshanna Utchenik, of Interstate Arts, was inspired by the many stories that emerged as she helped the James and Grace Lee Boggs School settle into its new home in the historic Sophie Wright Settlement House on Mitchell and Superior, as their founding art teacher. Also inspired by the work of the Boggs School Oral History Club, she assembled a team of artists to bring neighborhood stories to life in an innovative, exciting way.

Through this project, her aim was to encourage continued curiosity and intergenerational exchange around both our larger cultural dialogue of “resurgence” and between students and neighbors of Sophie Wright who have so much to offer each other.

Work

“Good Bones” honored the human stories made invisible by blight and is a site-specific project based at the historic Sophie Wright Settlement House that thrives on Detroit’s eastside. An audience seated on the empty lot across the street viewed the building’s windows as multiple screens revealed vignettes tied together by the voice of the building itself, large scale projections on the building’s facade, and live performers interacting with the building exterior.