# 19 – A Global Economic Crisis

Our day in Detroit was something else. With remnants of all the empty parking lots and shopping centers from our first day in Memphis, Detroit seemed to be the hardest hit area of this global economic crisis. Everyone knows that the town has been dying for twenty years or so now. The sheer volume of boarded up homes and businesses was enough to let me know that something was up with the economy. Meeting with the officials in Rossford and talking with certain people involved in different aspects of the automobile industry demonstrated how widespread this economic hit of the recent bankruptcies actually was. Tons of people are out of jobs, people that have worked for years and years are finding themselves completely empty-handed.
As much as this tragedy represents and downturn in the global economy, we see things like the Heidelberg Project that remind us of beauty coming from rundown places. I’m not advocating a vague, meaningless sense of hope in the future, but I am insisting that there is something to be said about the human spirit in the wake of crisis. Taking old vacuum cleaners, shopping carts, doors, and cars and creating artistic expression out of them tells us that we used to live without all of this crap that we apparently need nowadays. These objects have lost their ability to be used and thus their value in their original terms. Their lack of need gives way for a new need and new creativities. The building structures reminded me of the rundown areas of New Orleans, of certain parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn, of Long Beach… and East Nashville.