Heidi Go Seek – Livin In The D
October 12, 2009dominique 2 Comments »Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to Heidi Blanton, info gal wiki warrior and former classmate at Wayne State’s MLIS program, currently living in Birmingham, England. Her blog entry Livin In The D does a great job of pointing to the iconic American crossroads Detroit represents. It’s an exciting if somewhat scary time, fraught with all kinds of possibility. As someone who lived part of her adult life outside the city but still very much identified with it – “originally from Detroit” a badge of honor or courage – I have to agree that it is a place that never leaves you. It fascinates me that I have entrenched myself here again at such a time.
Isn’t it an ancient Chinese curse (or maybe just a fortune cookie) – “may you live in interesting times”?
I am curious how Professor Bergmann’s New Work will fit into all of this. It seems very much a time and place for such an idea, and certainly many of his ideas can be seen at the root of things like urban farming and localized economy and barter. I know he has been very much at work in Detroit but it has been difficult for me to pinpoint, and he has been out of the country most of the time since we began working on the site last spring. Much of the material he has given me is archival more than current. He is a brilliant man and it is important to archive his work, just wish my scanner hadn’t decided to give up the ghost 
. I have great hopes for the social interactivity of the site, the user provided content, and was thrilled to find a post by David Stevens linking New Work and Detroit Techno.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Thanks for your thoughts on the blog post Dominique. That one took awhile to write, I don’t know why. I didn’t want it to be too anti-Detroit, but didn’t want it to paint a picture of a cheery Detroit either.
Oh and an odd thing about the techno in Detroit, I went to a bloggers TweetUp here in Birmingham last night and one of the locals said he didn’t know anything really about the city, but his favorite techno music is mostly from Detroit. I thought it was great to say I was from a place and have somebody recognize it for something really positive!
October 13th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I’ve had the same experience in Berlin, London, San Francisco – mention Detroit and people have amazing responses to it – the culture cannot be denied.