Arts festival highlights Hamtramck’s border with Detroit

There will be plenty of live music this Saturday during the Porous Borders Festival happening along Carpenter.

 
By Mike Murphy
Special to The Review
Exploring Hamtramck/Detroit borders both physically and culturally will be the main agenda on May 16 and 17 when Detroit-based performance company The Hinterlands hosts its Porous Borders Festival.
The festival opens at 11 a.m. Saturday with a parade down the length of Carpenter Street followed by performances and artist installations located along many points of the Detroit/Hamtramck border. There will also be 10 other non-artist community projects, such as a talk on the history of the Hamtramck/Detroit border presented by Hamtramck Museum Curator and Historian, Greg Kowalski.
In addition, local artist and organizer Marsha Music will tell stories about organizing Dodge-Main workers. Her presentation will be accompanied by films focused on Dodge Main.
So what is and what isn’t the Detroit/Hamtramck border?
For festival co-directors Liza Bielby and Richard Newman, who moved to a home in Detroit just outside Hamtramck about five years ago, the question doesn’t always come with an easy answer.
“I live just north of the border on the Detroit side, and people think it’s Hamtramck,” said Newman, who said his own confusion over the question led him and Bielby to take walks tracing the geographical border, which in turn led the Hinterlands co-directors to think about the cultural borders that exist in the area.
“The festival is a way to explore these different kinds of borders and we hope to spur conversation through the festival and also afterward,” Newman said. “Our interest is in getting to know more about our neighborhoods.”
Newman said the festival was not geared specifically to relative newcomers to the area and that other parts of the Detroit area, including Canada, will be represented.
“Some of the other artists have lived here their whole life,” Newman said.
Newman said the festival project is part of a series of projects planned by the Carpenter Street community, which includes Popps Packing and other partners in the Carpenter Exchange.
A schedule and map of the festival will be available approximately one week before the event at various locations in Hamtramck and Detroit.