Oral Historian for the 20th Anniversary of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership | Hannah Balik Post Two

 

The bulk of my responsibilities were, of course, collecting the oral histories. That sounds simple, but there is a lot that goes into the process, both before and after actually sitting down and pressing the record button. First, Sandra and I had to finalize who we wanted to interview, and then the harder part- actually getting in contact with them, getting them to agree, and scheduling a time to meet up. Especially with the state of the pandemic over the summer, we didn’t want to put anyone in danger. 

Once an interview was scheduled, I would spend hours researching the person. I would look through the records that Sandra gave me access to, regarding the project. I also just familiarized myself with who this person was outside of this project - what they were doing twenty years ago, and what they do today. All of this information I gathered helped me tailor each interview to the individual I was interviewing. Being able to adapt your interview questions to the individual you are interviewing is an important skill, as it keeps the interview feeling personal, rather than robotic. 

Sandra and I set up a makeshift sound booth in the CADVC offices for interviews, lining the walls with thick blankets to curb any echo. This studio was an awesome space, although I ended up doing about half of the interviews off-campus, with the majority of those being outdoors. After each interview, I would upload the audio file into Google Drive, as well as my personal hard drive. Then, I would download it into the software Trint, which Sandra purchased for this project, very kindly. It is a transcribing software, the first time I’ve used one of this kind. Honestly, it was awesome! I’ve spent days transcribing interviews before so it was really helpful to just have to double-check the transcript after the computer did its work. Of course, the program isn't perfect, but it is a lot faster than doing it manually. After finalizing the interview’s transcript, I would write an abstract for each interview for the finding guide. I also wrote about two paragraphs for the finding guide, describing the original project, as well as the 20th-anniversary project. 

I ended up interviewing ten people, which I think is a good number in only three months. The people ranged from the higher-ups in the granting organization that gave the money to the CADVC for these projects, to park representatives, and UMBC staff. I have never interviewed so many people for one project, and I loved it. Storytelling is such a great way to connect to people and I loved learning about UMBC and the inner workings of Baltimore City community planning. I found it very satisfying when I would ask someone a question they didn't know the answer to, would tell me to ask someone else, and then when I asked that person, they would know and tell me. It was like a (really slow) game of tag. I had also never used a real recorder before, only my phone or computer. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a professional personal recording device from Dr. Meringolo, which helped the process greatly, in addition to giving the interviews better sound quality. 

In post three I will discuss future plans for this project, and the skills and lessons I will be taking with me from this internship into my career in Public History.

Oral Historian for the 20th Anniversary of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership | Hannah Balik Post One

 

This summer, I had an internship as an oral historian for UMBC’s Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture. I was interested in this internship because of my interest in public history and oral history. Once I learned that the oral history was going to be reflecting on the twenty-year anniversary of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership, which not only had roots on UMBC’s campus, but across Baltimore city, I was interested. Even though I had just spent the first year of my master’s degree online, and thus had never even been on campus, I was excited to be able to tell the story of this piece of UMBC history. The tree partnership consists of four parks paying homage to 20th century German artist Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks Project. The original project’s full name: 7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration consisted of the placement of 7,000 basalt stones with an oak tree planted next to it by a volunteer, in order to encourage the greening of public space, and encouraging all to be participants in their environment. Beuys initiated this project in 1982, but was unable to finish it before he died in 1986. The project was completed by Beuys’ son the year following his death. 

Renee Van der Stelt was the registrar and curator at CADVC in 2000, and had previously had a job at a museum that featured Beuys’ art. When she came to UMBC, she immediately had ideas to incorporate Beuys’ ideas of social sculpture, environmental art, and the expansion of green spaces to Baltimore. It was decided that there would be one sculpture park on campus, which would be the most cohesive and planned park. The other three parks in the project were already existing neighborhood parks with active community member run groups. The parks chosen in Baltimore city were Patterson Park, Carroll Park, and Wyman-Dell Park. These parks only received one rock and a small sign as a nod to the project. Otherwise, the trees were scattered throughout the park, with the main goal being to increase the tree canopy more than create a sculpture garden, like the one on campus. 

Sandra Abbott, the Curator of Collections and Outreach at the CADVC since 2008, had decided to create a project honoring the twentieth anniversary of the project. It was decided that collecting oral histories of the main players in the planning and creation of the parks was in order. Sandra planned on interviewing people across the board who had involvement in the project: from the CEO of the grant organization that made the project possible, to UMBC’s head of Facilities Management, who aided in the planting of many trees on campus. These interviews were intended to be turned into the base of an archive for the project. Sandra explained to me that she has been contacted in previous years by researchers wanting to learn more about the project. However, she had nowhere to point them towards and nothing to give them. She hoped that creating this collection of stories and sharing them on MD-SOAR would allow for both researchers and UMBC students to answer any questions they might have on the project. Sandra also hoped that UMBC art students would be able to take these recordings and animate them into stories, like they have done in the past with other oral histories.

When I interviewed for this position in late May, Sandra was looking for two historians to collect these stories. However, I turned out to be the only one hired. I was nervous about the workload, as Sandra had hoped to record up to twenty oral histories over the summer. I was expecting to be very busy: researching subjects, preparing questions, the interview itself, transcribing, and creating a finding guide with abstracts. Not to mention trying to get into people’s schedules with the pandemic and a very quick turnaround. This would also be my first project of this scale. Even though I had taken Dr. Lanman’s Intro to Oral History course last fall, and used interviews as a research method quite often in undergrad as a Sociology/Anthropology major, I knew that this was going to be quite the undertaking compared to what I have done previously.

In my next blog post, I will discuss the oral history process, and how these expectations compare to reality!