Storefront Broadcasts is a platform for our ongoing generative research, collaging case studies, conversations, field recordings, poetry, music, and other audit...
This episode focuses on our online obsessions, the digital realm, and how technology and commerce have changed the urban landscape and public life. It is a part of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground.
Poet and artist Benjamin Krusling layers and collages audio textures to explore structures of dispossession and the constitution of public space. Architect Jesse LeCavalier reads NYC Local Law 166, a local law established in 2021 in relation to micro-distribution centers for distributing goods from ecommerce platforms otherwise known as microhubs. Artist Danielle Dean talks about post-Fordism, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, and specifically how capitalistic structures are maintained through specific forms of labor organization and data collection. Artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s 4-channel video and live performance titled At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where the Existence and Disappearance of People Fade into Each Other. Writer and technologist Sophia Tareen brings together Claudia Irizarry Aponte, senior reporter covering labor and work issues for THE CITY and AI researcher Ria Kalluri to discuss contemporary labor movements and digital technology. Architect and curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli reads an excerpt from his research project Riders not Heroes, introducing us and setting the foundation for his video essay of the same name which we listen to next, that investigates the precarious conditions of food delivery riders in Milan. Artist David L. Johnson meets sociologist Sharon Zukin about their shared ongoing interest in the transformation of New York City and the increasing privatization of civic infrastructure. Artist Cao Fei’s documentary 11:11, recorded the work overload of the entire JD.com logistics sectors before and after the Double Eleven Shopping Day in China which is the equivalent of the Black Friday, sketches out the landscape of consumption driven by the powerful Internet economy and asks how this situation will lead us into a future social ecosystem. Curator and researcher Camila Palomino reads from her recent essay on artist Emily Jacir and unpacks her 2000 work, My America (I am still here).
This episode was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
SOUND CREDITS:
2050+ & -orama (Directors). (2021). Riders Not Heroes: Anatomy of a Delivery
Fei, Cao (Director). (2018).
Mauriès-Rinfret, Emmanuel (Director). (2022) Retail Apocalypse: The Epilogue | SSENSE x CCA
Julmud (2023). Tuqoos | ط ُ ق ُ و س
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2:27:14
Care
This episode focuses on different projects that are rooted in care and mutual aid through the lens of the city’s ground floor, and how practices that strengthen bonds of affection can transform and reshape our immediate environment. It is a part of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground.
It opens with an experimental choral performance read by Natalia Boumatar and Zara Zulfiqar. Red Canary Song introduces us to their advocacy around Asian and migrant massage parlor workers through their short film, “Fly in Power”. Curator Diya Vij, writer and organizer Ted Kerr, and artist Zacarías González have a conversation about the 90s Chicago-based art collective titled Haha, and their project Flood, which was a hydroponic garden in a storefront that grew vegetables and herbs for people with HIV. Curator Eric Booker reads archival texts from Smokehouse Associates, the artist collective that transformed Harlem with vibrant, community-oriented abstract murals and sculptures during the late 1960s. Writer Lam Thuy Vo reads from an article she wrote on Pearl River Mart for Documented NY. Artist Cudelice Brazelton talks to Senior frieze editor Terence Trouillot about his recent exhibition at Wschod Gallery in the Lower East Side and how his work relates to intimate micro practices of care. We learn from OlaRonke Akinmowo how the Free Black Women’s Library is fueled by tenants of Black Feminism, and the transformative power of both reading and creating. Huda Tayob discusses her research on Architectures of Care. Scholar Adam Anabosi performs a poem by Palestinian poet Tawfiq Zayyad written to the Palestinian people in their different places of refuge. Interspersed throughout the episode are clips and archival sounds from professors and writers Premilla Nadasen, Carlos Sanabria, Sharon Zukin and artist Jenna Bliss’s documentary “The People’s Detox.”
This episode was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
The Peoples’ Forum (Director). (2023). BOOK TALK: Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism with Premilla Nadasen and Ujju Aggarwal
Red Canary Song (Director). (2022). Fly In Power
Bliss, Jenna (Director). (2018). The People’s’ Detox
Global Cities Local Streets (Director). (2015). Orchard Street, New York Center for Puerto Rican Studies – Centro (Director). (2017). The Bodega: A Cornerstone of Puerto Rican Barrios
Tayob, Huda. (2015). Architectures of Care
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1:35:52
Void
This episode focuses on the various registers of emptiness across the built environment, and is apart of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground. The void is unpacked as spatial absences, erasure, unmet potential, permissive emptiness, liberating silences, and capital-driven failure. We explore the many languages of vacancy in New York City in dialogue with other socio-political contexts with shared challenges.
Dominique Petit-Frère from Limbo Accra talks about Into the Void, a digital project aimed at archiving West Africa’s unfinished property developments and revitalizing their existence through collectivity and embracing liminal space. Dragonfly (aka Robin LaVerne Wilson)—member of The Stop Shopping Choi—brings us into The Earth Chrxch. Writer Jeremiah Moss reads an excerpt from Feral City, a book they published in 2022 about life in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists Tom Burr and Carlos Motta think about voids in their multiple possibilities and what it means in the context of queer life. Artist Igancio Gatica has a conversation with Martha Snow from the Urban Design Forum and Gina Lee from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development about their studies on the hidden stories of city vacancies and their potential. Dia Art Foundation curator, Jordan Carter, reads an excerpt from a text by Glenn Ligon published in Artforum in September 2004, titled Black Light: David Hammons and The Poetics of Emptiness. Collaged within the episode are clips from archival videos and audio from artists Amanda Williams, Gordon Matta-Clark, June Jordan, Zoe Leonard, and Francisca Benítez.
This episode was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
SOUND CREDITS:
The Peoples’ Forum (Director). (2023). BOOK TALK: Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism with Premilla Nadasen and Ujju Aggarwal
Red Canary Song (Director). (2022). Fly In Power
Bliss, Jenna (Director). (2018). The People’s’ Detox
Global Cities Local Streets (Director). (2015). Orchard Street, New York
Center for Puerto Rican Studies – Centro (Director). (2017). The Bodega: A Cornerstone of Puerto Rican Barrios
Tayob, Huda. (2015). Architectures of Care
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1:32:31
Threshold
This episode explores the tensions between public and private space through a close look at New York City’s ground floor, and is a part of our 2023–2024 research theme: On the Ground.
Architect Sol Camacho reads from Lina Bo Bardi’s seminal text, Vitrinas. Artist Alvaro Barrington discusses the storefront as a threshold between life and work. Canal Street Research Association further explores their inquiry into billboards and the “facadification” of Manhattan in conversation with artists Nick Poe and Gabriela D’Addario, and Levi Eichenstein, CEO of Red Rock Outdoor. Journalist Nathan Kensinger and UPENN Media Studies professor Shannon Mattern engage in a conversation on their respective works on the transformation of the city’s streets and sidewalks. Architect Germane Barnes expands on his long-standing research project Porch Politics.
Threshold was originally published through Montez Press Radio.
SOUND CREDITS:
Brown, Barry Alexander (Director). (2010). Sidewalk
Cohen, Jem (Director). (1996). Lost Book Found
Fitzgerald, Kit and Sanborn, John with Van Tieghem, David (Directors). (1982). Ear to the Ground
Houston Jr., Otis. (2020). I Like Where I Stay. On AMERICA
Wilson-Tanner. (2022). Sun Room. On 69
Storefront Broadcasts is a platform for our ongoing generative research, collaging case studies, conversations, field recordings, poetry, music, and other auditory articulations to weave our findings together.
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