Reconfigurations - Regional Arts and Culture Council

Documentation of Reconfigurations. Courtesy of Adam Kuby.

On July 31st at 7 pm, we celebrated the recently installed public artwork, Reconfigurations with a poetry reading. The evening will took place beside the artwork located on the newly completed multi-modal trail South Tabor Access Trail, at SE 64th Avenue and Division Street to SE Sherman Street.

A collaboration between artists, writers, stones, and trees

Three configurations of stones, poetry and trees are set out along this path.

As the trees grow, the reconfiguring will continue…

Walk slowly. The person you are today will be different than the person you are tomorrow.

Reconfigurations began in 2016 when artist Adam Kuby was selected from the RACC Design Team Roster to join the design team of OPSIS Architecture and Lando Landscape Architecture for the Parks Replacement Bond project at Mt. Tabor Yard and the new access trail. The project took many twists and turns, eventually landing on the idea of three pairs of stones engraved with written text each with a tree in the middle which will eventually move (reconfigure) the placement of the stones over time.

Public Art Director Kristin Calhoun introduced Kuby to Dao Strom of de-canon as a potential collaborator for the written aspect of the work. Alongside Strom, a cohort of six poets was curated including Samiya Bashir, Trevino Brings Plenty, Sam Roxas-Chua, Anis Mojgani, Stephanie Adams-Santos.

Each poet was given the prompt to respond to the word reconfigurations in a poem of 30-40 words. Once they had each written their poems, they mutually decided to blend what they had done individually into a new poem that was then laid out & engraved on the six split stone faces set in three locations along the path.

Reconfigurations Full Poem Text