New Orleans 100: Interview With Constance

All Day Buffet has compiled the New Orleans 100, a list of innovative and world-changing ideas that have come out of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. Designed to encourage discussion about the rebirth of the city, the NOLA 100 highlights the good that has grown out of the tragedy.

PSFK sent a few questions to 5 of the groups from the New Orleans 100 list who are making change for the better in New Orleans.

Today, we’re talking with Patrick Strange and Erik Kiesewetter from Constance, an art and literature publication that explores the chaotic life of New Orleans.

What is Constance?

Constance is an art and literature journal edited and published by myself
and Erik Kiesewetter. Constance features painting, photography, mixed-media,
illustration, collages, poetry, nonfiction, fiction and other mediums by New
Orleans artists and writers, and also by those who have been forced to
relocate due to Katrina. The content is submission based, and all
submissions are judged by jury lead by Erik and myself. We’ve had two
issues, the first published in 2006 entitled “Replicas and Replacements” and
the second issue published this past spring entitled “Delicate Burdens.” You
can find the issue in bookstores, galleries, and museums in New Orleans, and
in bookstores and shops in Los Angeles, Portland and San Francisco. You can
also purchase the journals online.

We founded the journal in the hopes to give New Orleans-based artists and
writers a voice and also a platform with which to express themselves
following the hurricane. We believed that it was detrimental to not only the
recovery of New Orleans but to the ongoing history-making of the hurricane.
Artists and writers’ reactions to the storm must be documented and
preserved. And on a purely practical level, many artists and writers lost
the avenues with which to distribute and make their work - studios,
publications, presses - they were all destroyed. Constance was to serve as a
new means to get work published and expose New Orleans art to a larger
audience.

To date, many artists and writers have been included in the two issues and
their work has reached many disparate hands across the country. Several
artists have been commissioned and writers published following their
appearances in Constance. This is a source of great happiness and pride for
us…to help those who make this project possible - the artists and writers.
Without them, we’d have nothing.  - Patrick

How did the tragedy of Katrina provide a unique opportunity for innovation, change and growth?

Katrina didn’t provide an opportunity for innovation, it compelled us to
act. We had to do something. We had to express ourselves. We had to say
something, and I guess Constance, for us, was that outburst. If anything,
Katrina challenged us to try to channel all the anger, frustration, and
trauma into something positive. I’m not sure how well it is succeeding, but
I do know that we have been able to bring artists and writers together in a
new forum that celebrates what’s most powerful about art - its ability to
heal and preserve. I think our journal, in some small way, eases a burdening
feeling of helplessness and imposed silence for many of those involved in
the book; at least it does for us. - Patrick

What about New Orleans inspires you?

Well, what is most special about New Orleans for me is that I was born
there, and grew up in the city and surrounding areas. I have many friends
and family members in southern Louisiana. It’s my home. And you only get one
of them. After what happened, a lot of people lost a lot of what defined
their home. And even people who moved there later in life and made it home,
it was just as much a foundation for them as those who had been there their
since birth. People had to not only rethink their origins, but had to start
anew. That’s so tremendously painful; to have to find a new starting point,
a new place of security and constancy. I guess what inspires me about New
Orleans is that anything that is lost there will never be again. I guess in
our way, we are just trying to keep people aware; through art, of what is
going on and what still needs to be done. I guess if something is lost and
no one remembers it, it never existed in the first place. We are inspired to
make people remember. - Patrick

Growing up in Louisiana, much like anywhere, you’ll have types of people
that make the state. Upon relocating to New Orleans a few years back, it is
apparent that the city itself is its own bizarre microcosm of the state as
whole. The most inspiring thing I find is that New Orleans is the living
definition of the ever-fighting human tradition. I have come to know some of
the dearest people in my life here and have shared events, times and stories
that I know I will always cherish. It is knowing that I always miss the
people back home when I am not there. It is our resilience and our ability
to make due with dire situations. Simply, it is our community and those
people around us that keep me going. There are many things I miss about what
New Orleans was a few years ago, but I also know that our present time, this
historical period, is so full of energy and life that it is hard to see how
it would’ve unfolded if Katrina had never taken place. -Erik

Constance