Making a Place

Making a Place

Making a Place: Rhythms, Ruptures + Rutgers in 1960’s Newark is the starting point for Newark Rhythms, a three-year research, music and visual arts performance and exhibition cycle based on the legacy of the university in the community. Timed for the 50^th anniversary of the campus construction and dedication in 1968, Newark Rhythms will be an ongoing process of research and self-reflection for the university about its role in Newark’s post-war history, intentionally multi- and interdisciplinary and comprised of several components that recall the city as a crucible of radical action, resistance, and change. By accessing this history, the archive will continue to reveal several parallel and intersecting cultural, social, and political threads that seem ever more relevant to our present era: access to social goods and social justice, inclusion and exclusion, the role that the arts play in community cohesion and individual empowerment, the opportunities provided by spaces of resistance, and the role that higher education plays in the development of communities and personal growth.

The publication expands Dr. Eva Giloi’s exhibition, Making a Place: Rutgers University-Newark as a Microcosm of 1960s America, at John Cotton Dana Library (Oct. 2016 - Apr. 2017), into a self-reflection on the university’s post-war legacy. With a core team of Designer Chantal Fischzang and Curator/Editor Ian Cofre, the publication reinterprets archival material about the architects’ and university administration's intentions; process/timeline of campus construction; how students carved out a meaningful place; Art's role in community cohesion; and the real/contrasting effects on the city. A structural two-column, modular grid layout corresponds to the narrative about modernist architecture, interjecting subversive typography to reinforce connections between words, photographs and graphics. Further, it emphasizes the layers of the university’s founding and exposes underlying realities through an interlaced insert within the pages, highlighting the complex relationship with the surrounding community.

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AWARDS

◘ 2019 Award of Excellence | Communication Arts Typography Annual Competition

Chantal Fischzang, Designer for 'Making a Place: Rhythms, Ruptures and Rutgers in 1960’s Newark,' won the 2019 Award of Excellence in the Communication Arts Typography Annual Competition. Fischzang’s design corresponds to the narrative about modernist architecture, interjecting subversive typography to reinforce connections between words, photographs and graphics.