The Walker, the hub of the city’s contemporary arts scene, is one of the main museums participating in and promoting the UnConvention. The museum has been in flux recently with the loss of director Kathy Halbreich to MoMA in New York and the upcoming departure of chief curator Philippe Vergne for New York’s Dia Foundation on September 15. Yet in addition to its organizational role, the Walker, which has focused many of its efforts of late on art as a participatory experience, has been involved in training aspiring videographers for “I Approve This Message.” Organized by documentarian Chuck Olsen and his citizen journalism organization, the UpTake, the project allows everyday citizens to create DIY videos in which they share their concerns with the delegates. The videos will be aired on JumboTrons in downtown Minneapolis’s Peavey Plaza, on the UnConvention’s YouTube channel, and later in an installation at the Walker Art Center and will be promoted by the British newspaper the Guardian.

“We want to use the power of online video to give people a voice in the RNC,” Olsen says. “These videos can literally put anyone at this exclusive event.” (The UpTake tried to get into the RNC as journalists or via Google, an RNC sponsor, but was denied access.) Indeed, many of the projects in the UnConvention use the power of citizen-controlled new media, from blogs to YouTube, to explore and challenge concepts of democracy itself.

The ideas of citizen organization and engagement are what Gonzalez says the UnConvention is all about. Both literally and metaphorically, she says, all of the art projects will be powered by the people and fueled by the imagination. One perfect illustration of the UnConvention’s vision is the F-30 Pedal Cloud bike, an 11-person vehicle/sculpture that will be traveling all over the Twin Cities during the convention.

“It requires people to move together,” says Gonzalez. “It requires hands and feet and voices, and it requires the cooperation of all of the people using it in order to move forward.”