"What do you think about Cleveland?" That was the pivotal question asked by multi-media conceptual artist Carl Pope as he attempted to map the collective psyche of our town for his latest project, The Mind of Cleveland. The Indianapolis artist, who's attained international acclaim for his past projects shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Biennial, has often focused on black identity issues; here he focuses similar dissection tools on a different sort of nebulous cultural ID. After raising funding, Pope started making trips to Cleveland last fall to consult with his collaborators at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Case Western Reserve's Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, meet local people, give a series of public talks and gather the raw material for the finished project.

Why Cleveland? Pope was approached about three years ago by a former student of his who is now teaching at the CIA. "I'm interested in communities and how they develop," says Pope. "I'm interested in their hidden histories." Cleveland provided a rich lode. Few cities have had such dramatic reverses in fortune as Cleveland, and few have developed as a result its distinctive mixture of amused self-deprecation, unmoored giddy boosterism and dead-end defeatism. Few cities are as reflexively defensive about their assets and liabilities, as reflected in slogans over the years such as "New York's an apple, but Cleveland's a plum," "The best location in the nation" and "Cleveland: You've Got be Tough." Pope and his many local collaborators came up with a whole new set of slogans, now on display in a variety of formats including 40 billboards scattered around town, kiosk posters downtown and at CIA's Reinberger Galleries.

In a sense, Pope and his collaborators performed open-brain surgery on the city over a period of months, teasing out in a series of talks and via the project's Web site, themindofcleveland.com, how locals felt about the city. As Pope puts it, "The real artists are the people of Cleveland. People have the power to take over from those in power." Maybe, but the end results reveal both an optimism verging on delusional and a sense that things can never get better.

The billboards are both a tease - a little tickle at the edge of the brain - and a way of injecting this art about the city back into the city. Commuters on Carnegie have probably seen the billboard on the south side of the street across from a new Cleveland Clinic parking garage that's under construction. "An East/West Racial Divide Visible from Outer Space," it proclaims. Given that the project is identified only in tiny letters, and that only a miniscule number of passing motorists are plugged in enough to the art community to know what's going on, most will miss the attribution, which leaves the message open to interpretation as to who's behind it and why.

The display at the CIA galleries collects the various slogans from around town and adds more: small posters that visitors can pick up for free (the upbeat slogans such as "Stop waiting and make it happen now" and "The leaders we are looking for are within ourselves" seemed to be the most popular); slogans in vinyl press-on lettering applied to the wall; an interview film with Clevelanders talking about the city; and another created by students at the Cleveland School of the Arts, exploring how the arts provides a refuge from life on their block. There's also original art work from collaborators: people who attended Pope's talks last fall; a second grade class at Richmond Heights Elementary School, which also participated by randomly drawing the slogans finally used out of a large papier-mache top hat (also on display); and students at the Garrett Morgan Cleveland School of Science.

In the gap between the raw original work (hand-drawn with markers and pen on construction paper) or responses written on slips of paper piled into the hat (which viewers can pull out and read) and the slogans rendered in simple, blocky letters on posters on the wall and on the billboards in a variety of color combinations, is a world of conflicting emotions and outlooks that's overwhelming and whiplash-inducing. "You've Got Cleveland - What More Do You Need" proclaims one proudly, and another, "Cleveland: Revitalize Reenergize Resurrect," could be a chamber of commerce-commissioned catchphrase. (It's certainly zingier than "Cleveland +" or "Positively Cleveland.") "I want Cleveland to be what New York was in the '30s," offers another. Wish granted - in the '30s, New York, like the rest of the country, was in the midst of the Great Depression.

But glance elsewhere and you read, "Cleveland is not safe or educated," "When is it too late?" "U Win, U Lose and Then U Lose More," and "Hate Hidden Behind Smiles." "Cleveland: Where Creativity Works" jostles "Cleveland: Where Ambition Is a Dirty Word"; "Cleveland is a city DARING to reinvent itself" holds a debate with "No money no jobs get out" and "The democracy here is a joke."

Others merely express hopes and reality in prosaic words: "I would like to see more support from parents," "The city will not change until the school system changes," "I want to see a cleaner Lake Erie," even the bite-sized dream "I wish the 9 ran on time." And there are a handful so cryptic they imply hidden histories of their own: a multi-colored poster, reminiscent of the '60s promotions for R&B revues that cropped up on phone poles in the inner city, exclaims, "West 177th Street and Clifton: Candyland Honey!"

The children of Kristin Thompson's Richmond Heights second-grade class, unsurprisingly, bring things down to a personal, micro level, in their childish, hand-drawn answers to what they like about Cleveland. Among the things they like: their school, the mall, music, cherry pie and potato soup, and the fact that their cousin is visiting until July. In the end, they remind us, it's all about appreciating the small things closest to you. It reinforces the concensus opinion of the interviewees in the film about Cleveland's strengths and challenges: that Cleveland's strength is in the diversity of its people and its weakness is those people's inability to work together to reach common goals.

The Mind of Cleveland: Through May 3 at CIA Reinberger Galleries, 11141 East Blvd., 216.421.7000.