By Mina Bloom & Brianna Wellen

Tenants have long since moved out, and layers of the last remaining Cabrini-Green high-rise have fallen, but stories of the community have found new life amid destruction.

On-site, 1230 N. Burling St., blinking lights shining through the cracks convey expressions of home, destruction and issues of public housing, acting as beacons of those who consider the Cabrini-Green community home. Internationally, the housing development’s social issues and narratives of the community were brought to life through film, using images and audio of the final days of the local high-rises to connect the story globally.

Wrecking balls struck the last standing high-rise in Cabrini-Green at the end of March. Built in the 1940s, the buildings comprised 10 structures and housed around 15,000 people in their heyday. Throughout the years, however, gang violence and deterioration led to Cabrini-Green’s reputation as one of the most dangerous public housing projects in the country. As a result, the community has been undergoing a transformation: the rehabilitation of low-rise buildings and the demolition of the high-rise buildings.

In an effort to document the highly ritualistic demolition, Chicago-based journalists and artists are using everything from light shows to audio interviews to illustrate the human experience. Internationally recognized, Web-based documentary “Highrise/Out My Window” and local light show “Project Cabrini Green” are two examples in which people who have lived in the neglected housing project for decades talk about what the change will bring.

Wrecking balls struck the last standing high-rise in Cabrini-Green at the end of March. Built in the 1940s, the buildings comprised 10 structures and housed around 15,000 people in their heyday. Throughout the years, however, gang violence and deterioration led to Cabrini-Green’s reputation as one of the most dangerous public housing projects in the country. As a result, the community has been undergoing a transformation: the rehabilitation of low-rise buildings and the demolition of the high-rise buildings.

In an effort to document the highly ritualistic demolition, Chicago-based journalists and artists are using everything from light shows to audio interviews to illustrate the human experience. Internationally recognized, Web-based documentary “Highrise/Out My Window” and local light show “Project Cabrini Green” are two examples in which people who have lived in the neglected housing project for decades talk about what the change will bring.

‘Highrise/Out My Window’

When David Schalliol was a high school student living in Indianapolis, he drove to the city and took notice of public housing projects in Bronzeville, like Robert Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens alongside the DanRyan Expressway.

“I was thinking about how close they were to the Loop—a massive center of commerce and wealth,” Schalliol said. “There was this obvious disparity there.”

These kinds of observances at an early age led Schalliol to work toward earning his doctorate in sociology at the University of Chicago and becoming the visiting assistant professor of Social Sciences at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

In addition, he works as the managing editor for Chicago-centric news blog Gapers Block.

But Schalliol’s contribution to international Web documentary “Highrise/Out My Window” is a point of pride for him because it’s gained critical success, including winning an International Digital Emmy on April 4—the award for best digital nonfiction program in Cannes, France. Directed by Canadian filmmakers Katerina Cizek and Gerry Flahive, “Highrise/Out My Window” explores the social stratification of high-rise apartment living in 13 cities across the globe, using 360-degree photography, video, audio and text to showcase 49 nonfiction vignettes from December 2009 to January 2010.

Chicago is one of the cities featured in the film. Specifically, the soon-to-be fully razed Chicago Housing Authority development Cabrini-Green was chosen by Schalliol and creative associate Heather Frise, among others, because of its imminent demolition. Schalliol said this particular housing project on the Near North Side is an excellent example of how the elimination of similar developments will change the reference point for thinking about poverty.

“This project provides the opportunity to situate Chicago—the peoples’ lives being affected and crafting those experiences in those places—side by side with people who are doing the same thing around the globe,” Schalliol said.

Families being forced to move are experiencing mixed emotions, which is illustrated throughout the film.

“On one hand, there’s a real sense of loss for the community disappearing, and physically there’s a feeling of, ‘My gosh, the places of my childhood or where I raised my child are being erased,’” Schalliol said. “And there’s sort of an excitement about going somewhere else. They were in a position [where] they knew they had to move sometime soon, but they didn’t know when, and they knew they were going to have to move somewhere but they didn’t know where. In some ways, the feelings were anticipation, loss and also anxiety about what that change was going to bring.”

Frise said the production team wanted to represent a young person’s perspective on home and the experience of living in a high-rise. Cabrini-Green residents Donna Batom, 36, and her 14-year-old daughter, Brittany McIntosh, provide audio clips that reinforce the general research done about the move.

“There are some people who are really excited to move into mixed income development or Section 8 or other people who have concerns about it,” Schalliol said. “You’re leaving a place that is meaningful—in some ways tragically and in some ways life-affirming.”

Frise added that McIntosh expounds on what it means to lose her home and the memories tied to her family.

“The Chicago story was unique in that way to the project,” said Frise, who worked with director Cizek on a Webby Award-winning Filmmaker-In-Residence project that began in 2004.

Under the National Film Board of Canada, Cizek said she experimented with form and content in the ecosystem of an inner-city hospital. The result was one of the world’s first feature-length online documentaries.

“Highrise/Out My Window” is similar to “Filmmaker-In-Residence” in that it’s entirely Web-based and involves many different components. After more than a year of research that involved exploring interesting high-rises around the world, Cizek said creating a virtual high-rise to house interviewees from around the world using Flash seemed like a natural product. Housing advocates, technology teams and animators are among the kinds of people who worked for two years to produce the Web package.

In addition to awards, the amount of praise on social media sites excited Cizek and her team.

“When I saw a Twitter [post] from a mother in NYC that her 6-year-old had just spent an hour on the site…,” Cizek said. “This is not a project that I ever thought would speak to a 6-year-old, but the way they created a game-like navigational system where you move through the collages of all the different apartments [helps]. That, to me, speaks volumes.”

Schalliol said he was approached by the National Film Board of Canada because of his visible reporting on social stratification and public housing and his photography skills. Originally, Frise and Schalliol chose Archer Courts, 2242 S. Princeton Ave., in Chinatown, but later decided Cabrini-Green made more sense in the context of the project. Conversely, Archer Courts is a community-based model for urban renewal.

Cizek created a film titled “Seeing Is Believing” 10 years ago, which explores the relationships between new technologies, democratizing movements around the world and use of technology to defend human rights.

From there, she began working with the National Film Board of Canada, which went on to produce “Highrise/Out My Window.” Cizek said the reason she’s found success is due to her fluid filmmaking process.

“The idea is that we’re not too concerned with the way we’re going to deliver our content until we understand our subject, these relationships and research,” Cizek said. “The best way to tell the story will emerge as we get to know the story. ‘Out My Window’ took [more than] a year of research.”

Ultimately, this particular project highlights what it means for a community to change and to leave a community. Using interactive visual media, cultural snapshots of Cabrini-Green, along with high-rises in 12 other cities, provide a lens to look at urban density and affordable housing. What makes a place home, how to create safe and affordable neighborhoods and fostering supported communities come to mind.

“You can hear it in their voices and the stories they’re telling,” Schalliol said. “This is something that has that kind of complexity. There’s a lot of possibility about leaving, but there’s a lot that they’re leaving behind.”

‘Project Cabrini Green’

A creation from local artist Jan Tichy gave Chicago youth involved in the community’s educational programs a chance to address their feelings about the demolition of the last building in the housing development. Those involved in the project were encouraged to creatively reflect on social issues in their community while highlighting a historic moment in Chicago’s history.

“I felt like this particular demolition could be seen as a historical moment, and therefore it felt important to find a way to relate to it,” Tichy said. “I don’t think this project is about whether this building should be taken down or not; it’s more a way to speak about these things, and it’s definitely a tribute to the lives lived here.”

To translate the poems of the students for “Project Cabrini Green,” Morse-code like programming was created so 134 battery-powered LED lights would blink each word, spelling out the students’ writings in the windows of the 134 apartments of the high-rise. A model at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., demonstrates how the translation works along with a print publication of all the poems and a live feed of the demolition.

According to Tichy, the purpose wasn’t to make a statement for or against Chicago’s public housing but to get a conversation started among young people about how the demolition affects their lives.

Tichy reached out to surrounding educational centers, such as Cabrini Connections tutoring center, 800 W. Huron St., and spoke with students from all different backgrounds about the project. Workshops addressed issues of public housing and demolition to hear students’ voices on the subjects and discussed public art as a way to express these points of view, he said.

Bradley Troast, assistant program coordinator of Cabrini Connections, involved his art classes as a group project but soon realized the project’s impact. According to Troast, at least half the kids at the center come from the Cabrini-Green area. For those unfamiliar with the housing unit and project surrounding it, a live feed of the building’s demolition currently plays in the Cabrini Connections lobby.

When people ask what the blinking lights are about, Troast points them in the direction of a student to share their work and view on the subject.

“Previously when people have said, ‘Cabrini-Green is gone,’ it’s talked about in terms of city ordinances, but this is a more human connection,” Troast said.

The demolition hits students especially close to home because, unlike the older residents, they haven’t finished growing up there, according to 16-year-old Mylana Williams, who contributed three poems to the project. She said having to leave one’s home as a teenager, whether the circumstances surrounding it are good or bad, is always a difficult thing, and this is no exception.

“I have a poem based on the destruction of Cabrini-Green, how people’s homes are being taken away from them,” Williams said. “Good and bad have come out of Cabrini-Green, but I have family and friends who had to move out. That was someone’s home. I know Cabrini-Green wasn’t the safest place in the world, but it was a place people did call home.”

For Williams, being involved with the project provided her with stronger emotional connection once the building began to fall. Aside from her personal memories of Cabrini-Green, there is now a physical representation of her connection inside the building. She said it hurts to see the building destroyed, and part of her is going down with it.

“It’s a powerful moment when you know it’s your poem blinking, you can locate it and you see it like it is now with all the destruction around it,” Tichy said.

These strong reactions aren’t solely from students. Every night since the demolition started, Tichy comes to the site and finds people drawn to the lights, relaying their stories and feelings about the building to him.

Through the site, the exhibit at the MCA and students telling their stories, Troast said the best outcome is the awareness of the community surrounding Cabrini-Green, whether buildings stand there or not.

“We’ve been trying to use these lights as a visual symbol as students still being in the area,” Troast said. “Even if you were to argue [Cabrini-Green] is all gone, we feel there’s a strong community that grew [throughout] 40, 50 years, and our students still like being part of that.”

The lights blink from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. every night at 1230 N. Burling St. A live feed of the demolition along with students’ written poems, spoken word recordings and a model of the high-rise are on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., until the demolition is expected to be completed on April 30.