Following the public AIC launch event on the afternoon of Oct. 9, 2009, approximately 64 people reconvened for a dinner/discussion event at MIT’s Stata Center dining room, organized by the Platform 2 artists’ collective. Each table focused on one of the eight themes of the Artists’ Prospectus for the Nation, assisted by a commissioned placemat by a New England-based artist (see the “Shelter” placemat, top right, by Boston architect Meejin Yoon). An empty placemat at each table was used by diners to record notes from the discussion. Pictured directly above is the notated placemat from the Shelter Table.

Here is a summary of that discussion by one of the Shelter Table's notetakers:

I tried to summarize our table's conversation on the placemat (I was the scribe) so I think there you will find the most complete description of the Shelter conversation. A couple of things I
remember:

- What is the difference between shelter/home/house?
- Homeless people may not want homes, i.e. there may be people that choose homelessness for certain reasons
- Rural Studio & other models which build homes for people - cost of maintaining these homes is sometimes prohibitive
- using corporate lobbies for temporary housing
- symbolic attempts at addressing Shelter (e.g. Wodickzko's or Orta's work) which raise awareness & spark imagintion vs. "real" attempts like Rural Studio - which is AIC interested in funding? both?
- shelter is like food - there is a lot to go around but not everyone that needs it gets it and there is a lot of waste - How to prevent so much waste? How to make use of what is already there?
- LMCC project to use empty spaces in NYC as temporary art spaces

Catherine D'Ignazio