This was a group project for Urban Design Theory class at Woodbury University during the spring semester of 2004. The assignment was to create a film analyzing and critiquing an urban condition. All images come from the film and the storyboard Brian Nilsson and I made for this project. The Temporal City has been one of the most meaningful projects I have done at Woodbury by allowing me to examine an ongoing experience that had evolved over 12 years of my life. The making of this film has also inspired me to seek out nomadic culture and architecture, the starting point for my degree project.
People come from all over the United States and Canada to experience Phish’s Temporal City known to Phish phans as “the Shakedown” or “Shakedown Street.” It’s a place with a unique energy that possesses all the qualities of a built city with nothing permanently constructed to produce the condition. The act of traveling is a very necessary component of the Shakedown. Experiences encountered along the way richly add character to the environment.
The Shakedown is a place of unpredictability, opportunity, and exchange; it’s an adaptable space that is shaped by the phans and everything they bring with them from their points of origin creating a new opaque reality. The concept of being a temporal city connotes a connection to impermanence.
This impermanence can be looked at by the perspective that this happening is linked to a very specific time frame as the city’s genesis and decline takes place over the course of about 10 hours per night beginning around 3:00pm when the lots to the venues open. This can go on for up to 3 or 4 days in each location at which time the city picks up and moves on to the next location.
These parking lots are typically used as a storage space for cars during a particular event and left completely empty most of the time when there’s nothing scheduled. The Shakedown transcends the functionality of the parking lot and becomes something new.
The most unique characteristic is that it has never been organized as an official event; it’s something that just takes place on its own. There’s no set plan to the Shakedown but an unspoken understanding among the travelers, which causes the elements of the city to converge creating the Shakedown. These elements chiefly consist of food, beverages, and goods phans bring to sell such as glassware, skateboards, T-shirts, and other commodities.
People offer other services such as massages, voter registration, and opportunities to participate in political action. Activities such as dancing, hackeysack circles, Frisbee games, and drum circles are also very common.
Being a mobile element, Phish phans who follow the band must make the decision that this will be a new lifestyle that they will embark on. The draw being mainly the music, the underlying attraction is the unpredictability of the event. No two shows are ever the same and no two Shakedowns are ever the same.
After the show, the Temporal City doesn’t close its doors, but remains open for more after-hours activity. Because this happening is unsanctioned and technically illegal, the police almost always shut it down within an hour or two from when the concert lets out.
As the city begins to deconstruct, the Green Crew comes behind to clean up. Though they see themselves as merely a presence on the lots of Phish shows, the have actually picked up all the trash and recyclables after every show since 1994. In doing so, they have helped minimize the impact that the Temporal City has on a host city.
Legend
- First night of tour, phans come from all over and erect The Temporal City.
- Second night of tour, the city picks up and moves to the next location mutating into a new form.
- Fifth night of tour, The Temporal City continues accumulating more travelers.
- Mid-tour, the city begins to lose travelers from one region and picks up phans from another creating an evolution in the subculture.
- Tour finale, The Temporal City has evolved and mutated as it reaches its final destination in a different form and subculture from its inception.
