This blogger documents all the cool things that are on their way to extinction in New York. A mix of preserving history and nostalgia through old school photography and new media. This website creates a nostalgic internet record of pre-internet New York.
This was a protest posted on Change.org in response to NYU's forced eviction deadline on students living in on-campus housing.
The following was the information posted on the site:
We, the undergraduate student body of New York University, strongly urge NYU to rescind the call for students to evacuate NYU residence halls before March 22nd.
Members of three organizations – Artists Building Communities, Essential Food and Medicine, and Living Earth Structures – have built a kitchen, clinic, free store, stage, toilet, oven, and shower with and for a homeless community near Wood Street in West Oakland.
The “Wearable/Portable Architecture project” discussed the possibilities of having a locale create portable architecture based on the conditions of its environmental, urban and cultural conditions. It is structured to find ways in providing new arguments and sustaining an artistic impetus to our immediate environment.
Mayor Gilberto Kassab passed a Clean City Law that banned all public advertising in Sao Paulo, one of the world's most populous cities. The mayor gained the support of the city's elites in pressing the law as an anti-pollution measure targeting "visual pollution". The city was quickly stripped of its ubiquitous billboards, signs, graffiti and other public ads.
Conceived and curated by Bushwick native Joe Ficalora, the Bushwick Collective has evolved into an extraordinary open-air gallery since its first mural surfaced in 2011.
Attracting a wondrous array of local, national and international artists, it showcases first-rate street art -- from legendary Blek Le Rat stencils to huge collaborative walls by such world-renowned artists as Case Ma'Claim and Pixel Pancho.
Spread over three institutions — the Bronx Museum of the Arts; El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem; and Loisaida Inc., a cultural center in the East Village — this show departs from straight political history by presenting the Young Lords as a cultural phenomenon as well as an ideological one, with a highly developed instinct for visual self-projection, right down to having an official party photographer, the gifted Hiram Maristany.
Puerto Rico doesn’t know what’s going on here, and if they do, they’re ignoring us.” So opens Gabriel Miranda’s documentary Vietnam, Puerto Rico. Focused on the coastal community of Vietnam, which is located in the Guaynabo, the doc tells the story of a disenfranchised population being displaced over the past two decades to make room for a glitzy new waterfront development.
Art in Odd Places (AiOP) presents visual and performance art in unexpected public spaces. AiOP also produces an annual festival along 14th Street in Manhattan, NYC from Avenue C to the Hudson River each October.
Vacated reverse engineers Google Street View to highlight the changing landscape of various neighborhoods throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. The project finds buildings constructed in the past four years using the NYC Department of City Planning's PLUTO dataset, and it leverages Google Street View's cache to visualize absent lots just before new buildings were constructed.
On the afternoon of September 11th, nearly a hundred people hugged each other to feel the beauty of the hug on the Paris Square in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, under the leadership of the Chinese artist Gao Brothers. At the beginning of the event, the Germans have not yet adapted to the behavior of embracing strangers, but encouraged by Gao brothers, people have opened their arms and gave the strangers around them a warm hug.
Unveiling the Unseen
BlindWiki is a location-based audio network where citizens who are blind or partially sighted use smartphones to share their findings by posting sound recordings. The platform does not just contain information about difficulties and barriers but is also a repository for experiences, opinions and stories, generating a creative and collaborative cartography of the unseen.
Brooklyn deli re-brands as artisanal emporium to protest rent hike
The owners of an imperiled Boerum Hill deli have staged an “artisanal takeover” of their 25-year-old corner store, re-branding products with yuppified names and jacking up prices to illustrate the kind of shop that could afford the 250-percent rent hike they say the store’s landlord is demanding.
MADE HERE is a documentary series and website focusing on performing artists based in New York City. A collage of intimate interviews, performances and behind-the-scenes footage, MADE HERE mirrors the rich diversity of the artists and communities they serve. It reflects on Performance Artists battle to balance work and art in New York City.
Just weeks after activists staged an alternative tour of the American Museum of Natural History to call for its removal, among other things, the equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt was vandalized early Thursday morning.
Creative Time, Social Practice Archive: In 2000 Heavy Trash, an anonymous arts organization of designers, architects, and urban planners, implemented its Aqua Line project throughout various parts of Los Angeles. The project involved the installation of false "Future Station Location" signs in the downtown area, notifying passersby of the impending construction of a subway that would connect the downtown to the Westside.
By Rebecca Davis and Meena Hart Duerson
Those who believed the Occupy Wall Street movement was all but dead after its dramatic removal from Zuccotti Park last fall may have been surprised to see the group pop up again in the days after Hurricane Sandy.
But this time, they weren’t organizing protests – they were calling on their large network to come to the aid of those hit hardest by the storm.
"Lincoln Square — The runners tossed blankets, gloves, jackets and other gear onto the pile, each leaving a piece of where they came from. A French man donated his running shirt and pants, and noted that they were designer wear. Enybe Merritt, 32, contributed a West Virginia University Cycling sweatshirt.
More than 200 people protested outside Lebanon's justice palace on Thursday over efforts to derail an investigation into the deadly 2020 Beirut port explosion, as top judges cancelled a meeting to discuss the fate of the inquiry.
"The Uni Project aims to do one thing and do it well: temporarily
transform almost any available urban space into a public reading room
and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and
learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at
street-level in our cities." (From site.)
A converted school bus with the sawed-off top is taking Mexico City visitors on the "Corruptour", a visit to the country's seedy underbelly of murderous misdeeds and multibillion-dollar graft by public officials.
#NYTIMES Why are there no U.S. anti-slavery monuments? http://antislaverymonument.org project is an answer.
Standing 60 feet tall, corten steel of two hollow chain links the upper one broken.
In 2009, the dissident artist created a work to honour the thousands of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake. He recalls how the project, Remembering, angered China’s rulers – and changed his career for ever
This is an edited extract from The Start podcast